FORGING 
PASSION 


l?iliKZi^33i 


Mary  Everest  Boole 


Fnuc. 


LIBRARY. 


THE  FORGING  OF  PASSION 
INTO  POWER 


THE 

FORGING  OF  PASSION 
INTO  POWER 


BY 

MARY   EVEREST   BOOLE 


NEW   YORK 

MITCHELL    KENNERLEY 

1911 


EDUC 

PSYCH. 

UBRARY 


If  I  make  my  bed  in  hell,  behold,  thou  art  there." 

Psalm  139. 
Forge  and  transform  my  passion  into  power." 

Frederic  W.  H.  Myers. 


374153 


TLO 
H.  M. 

IN    MEMORY    OF 

FRANCES    OBRENOVITCH 

ADVISER    OF 

THE    TEMPTED    AND    DESPAIRING 

IN    A   LAND    OF    SLAVES 


On  the  few  occasions  when  you  and  I  have 
met^  we  have  disagreed  on  nearly  every  point 
of  which  we  have  spoken. 

'But  we  are  linked  together  by  a  three- 
fold cord.  We  have  in  common  the  friend- 
ship of  '''■Frances  Ohrenovitch"  and  also 
that  nostalgia  of  the  abyss  and  that  passion 
for  the  despised  and  rejected  which  have  been 
the  common  basis  of  character  of  the  greatest 
saints  and  the  most  abandoned  sinners^  the 
most  hopeless  mental  wrecks  and  the  most 
eminent  scientific  discoverers  of  all  ages. 

31.  E.  ». 


CONTENTS 


PREFACE  

1.  INTRODUCTORY  .... 

2.  THE   TRAINING    OF    THE    IMAGINATION 

3.  ECONOMY   OF    FORCE 

4.  DESTRUCTIVE    MANIA 

5.  SUICIDAL    MANIA      .... 

6.  MORALITY    AND    ART 

7.  SEX    INSTINCTS         .... 

8.  PROTECTIVE    INSTINCTS  . 

9.  BALANCE    OF    THE    NERVOUS    SYSTEM 

10.  THE    INVERT   CONSCIOUSNESS  . 

11.  THE    FIXING    OF    GOOD    HABITS 

12.  CONSCIOUS    AND    UNCONSCIOUS    MIND 

13.  HYPERESTHESIA  — ADUMBRATIONS    —    HALLUCINA 

TIONS— HYSTERIA 

14.  MOBILITY    AND    DECISION 

15.  THE   STEADYING    OF    THE    IMAGINATION 

16.  TEACHER-LUST  .... 

17.  THE    NEW    IDEA    OF    ORDER       . 

II 


13 

21 
28 
32 

34 
42 
46 
55 
65 
72 

85 

92 

III 

115 
132 

136 
141 

M5 


PREFACE 

In  matters  of  external  advantage  the  poor  must  feed 
on  the  crumbs  which  fall  from  the  rich  man's  table.  In 
the  mental  science  of  how  to  suspend  passion  so  as  to 
convert  it  into  power,  the  inverse  rule  holds  good.  Or 
perhaps  it  would  be  a  truer  statement  of  the  case  if  we 
said  that  the  same  rule  holds  good  in  both  realms,  but 
the  classification  is  inverted  :  the  rich  in  the  goods  of 
this  world  have  to  ask  for  crumbs  which  fall  from  the 
table  of  the  others. 

Many  of  the  world's  wealthy  ones  appear  to  be  sin- 
cerely desirous  to  give  to  us  more  than  crumbs  of  their 
external  advantages.  But  there  seems  to  be  some 
insuperable  obstacle  in  the  way.  The  poor  in  money, 
health,  sanity,  culture,  and  reputation  are  always  with 
us,  and  the  other  poor,  the  poor  in  the  science  of  forging 
passion  into  power,  are  with  us  too. 

Perhaps  one  reason  why  the  world's  favoured  ones 
find  it  difficult  to  reach  us  either  to  give  or  to  receive 
effectively,  is  that  we,  the  poor,  do  not  reach  each  other. 
Perhaps  if  we  were  more  generous  to  each  other,  the 
current  thus  set  flowing  might  draw  with  it  the  possi- 
bility of  effective  currents  being  set  flowing  across 
barriers  made  by  worldly  prosperity. 
13 


1 4  Preface 

I  hope  in  this  volume  to  introduce  to  each  other 
various  kinds  of  persons  who,  in  various  ways,  have 
successfully  learned  the  great  art  of  converting  passion 
into  power. 

If,  or  in  so  far  as,  any  of  the  world's  favoured  ones 
should  at  some  future  day  read,  and  in  any  manner 
profit  by,  the  following  pages,  what  they  receive  will  be 
a  gift  from  the  poor  to  the  rich,  from  the  sick  to  the 
healthy,  from  those  who  have  lacked  the  advantages  of 
education  to  those  who  have  enjoyed  them,  from  patients 
in  lunacy  wards  to  commissioners  in  lunacy,  from  over- 
worked and  struggling  illegitimate  children  to  their 
sheltered  and  well-cared-for  legitimate  cousins,  from 
Asia  to  Europe,  from  Celts  to  Anglo-Saxons,  from  de- 
spised and  oppressed  races  to  their  conquerors,  from  the 
hooligan  class  to  the  respectable,  from  Jews  to  Christen- 
dom, from  benighted  and  superstitious  orthodox  Jews  to 
their  liberal  and  enlightened  co-religionists,  from  every- 
thing that  is  despised  and  rejected  to  whosoever  is 
honoured  by  the  world. 

But  for  the  present  we,  the  less  favoured  ones,  are 
going  to  have  a  little  talk  together. 

Of  those  who  have  assisted  in  accumulating  the  in- 
formation contained  in  this  work,  such  as  are  still  in  the 
flesh  can  claim  their  share  of  credit  (or  discredit?)  if 
they  like  to  do  so.  There  is  a  word  or  two  that  must 
be  said  about  some  who  have  passed  into  the  Silent 
Land. 

Nicolas  Antoine  Boulanger. — Left  school  a  hopeless 
dunce,  who  could  not  learn  algebra.  Died  in  his  fortieth 
year,  a  good  mathematician,  and  a  famous  engineer. 
Was  one  of  the  Enyclopaedists.     Left  behind  him  writ- 


Preface  1 5 

ings  from  which  it  appears  evident  that  he  had  recovered 
the  Ancient  Secret  Method  used  in  Egypt  and  India 
for  training  scientific  men,  engineers,  and  prophets. 

John  Boole. — Made  shoes,  shortly  after  the  date  of  the 
French  Revolution,  in  an  underground  and  sometimes 
very  damp  cellar  in  London.  Kept  a  French  dictionary 
in  the  drawer  with  his  tools.  Set  up  a  shoemaker's 
shop  in  Lincoln.  After  his  death,  his  widow,  being 
congratulated  on  the  achievements  of  her  son,  a  dis- 
tinguished mathematician,  replied  :  "  Yes  ;  George  is  a 
clever  lad.  But  did  you  know  his  father,  sir  ?  He  was 
a  philosopher." 

George  Everest. — Went  to  India  at  sixteen  years  old, 
in  the  service  of  the  East  India  Company.  Put  himself 
under  the  tuition  of  natives  of  India.  Learned  from 
them  Oriental  languages,  religion,  and  philosophy,  and 
taught  himself  European  mathematics  from  books. 
Became  Surveyor-General  of  India. 

George,  soft  of  the  above-named  Johti  Boole. — Earned 
his  own  living  from  the  age  of  fifteen  and  a  half.  Was 
prevented  from  going  to  college  by  the  necessity  of 
assisting  to  maintain  his  parents  and  younger  brothers. 
Became  distinguished  in  logic  and  mathematics. 

James  Hinton. — Began  life  at  about  fifteen  as  cashier 
in  a  woollen-draper's  shop.  Wrote  books  on  morph- 
ology and  psychology  that  considerably  affected  the 
trend  of  science. 

David  Marks. — Was  brought  up  at  the  Jews'  Free 
School,  and  earned  his  own  living  from  the  age  of  four- 
teen. In  his  youth  no  honourable  careers  were  open  to 
Jews,  except  as  teachers  among  their  own  people,  and, 
being  really  much  attracted  by  the  New  Testament,  the 


1 6  Preface 

brilliant  boy  was  terribly  tempted  for  some  years  to 
make  a  profession  of  Christianity  in  order  to  open  up  for 
himself  a  possibility  of  entering  some  university.  But 
by  the  age  of  twenty  he  had  finally  taken  his  resolution  ; 
to  use  his  own  expression,  he  had  decided  that  "  there 
was  life  in  the  old  ship  yet."  He  came  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  best  Christianity  for  a  Jew  is  to  conduct  himself 
and  his  ritual  so  that  Jesus  Christ,  if  He  were  on  earth, 
might  worship  beside  him  with  satisfaction.  Never  were 
more  significant  words  uttered  in  London  than  when 
David  Marks  said  to  his  congregation  at  Berkeley  Street : 
"  If  the  Founder  of  Christianity  came  back  to  earth, 
where  would  He  be  to-day?  In  church?  No,  but  here 
with  us,  repeating  the  Shemang  Israel  as  a  good  Jew 
should,  and  as  He  did  when  on  earth." 

On  his  ninetieth  birthday  David  Marks  received  con- 
gratulations and  thanks  from  Jews  all  over  the  world 
for  having  pioneered  the  way  for  Israel  from  slavery  and 
superstition  towards  culture  and  progress. 

But  the  reformer,  in  his  anxiety  to  purify  the  old 
Hebrew  ritual  from  superstitious  and  misleading  accre- 
tions, left  out  several  elements  of  overwhelming  import- 
ance to  our  knowledge  of  the  methods  of  culture  in 
use  in  the  Sacred  Past  where  men  were  trained  in  the 
science  of  prophecy.  These  elements  have  mercifully 
been  preserved  for  us  by  old-fashioned  Jews  in  Russia 
and  Poland  and  the  Ghetto  quarters  of  East  London : — 
"  This  strange  people,  wading  through  the  ages,  bearing 
on  their  shoulders  the  burden  of  their  great  trust." 

Lucy  Everest  Boole. — Never  at  any  college.  Learned 
chemistry  in  order  to  qualify  to  act  as  dispenser  or 
shop   assistant   in    pharmacy.     Became   Fellow  of   the 


Preface  1 7 

Institute  of  Chemistry,  Lecturer  on  Chemistry,  and 
Head  of  the  Chemical  Laboratories  at  the  London 
School  of  Medicine  for  Women. 

" Frances','  only  child  of  an  Irish  gentleman  of  good 
family  who  died  early,  leaving  her  a  ward  of  the  English 
Court  of  Chancery,  During  an  illness  which  supervened 
on  the  death  of  her  mother,  she  was  found,  by  a  jury 
consisting  of  two  or  three  English  doctors  (who  were 
not  her  peers),  guilty  of  two  crimes,  viz.,  incapacity 
for  taking  care  of  money,  and  the  habit  of  using  Oriental 
imagery  to  express  thoughts  too  subtle  or  too  sublime 
to  find  expression  in  ordinary  English.  She  was 
imprisoned  in  a  lunatic  asylum.  The  familiarities  and 
spiritual  promiscuity  of  such  places  being  intolerable  to 
her  sensitive  instincts,  she  took  refuge  in  a  mode  of  self- 
protection  often  resorted  to  in  such  cases :  she  set  up 
a  claim  to  be  called  Queen,  and  surrounded  herself  with 
a  sort  of  mock  court  etiquette.  She  took  the  title  of 
"  Queen  of  Servia  "  (Land  of  Slaves),  and  the  signature 
"  Frances  Obrenovitch,"  and  occupied  herself  in  studying 
psychology  and  in  acting  as  a  sort  of  confidante,  con- 
fessor, or  chaplain  to  such  of  the  patients  (and  they  were 
not  a  few)  as  she  could  induce  to  listen  to  her  exhorta- 
tions. I  met  her  when  she  had  been  already  four  years 
in  captivity;  she  was,  I  think,  the  grandest  spiritual 
force  which  ever  came  into  my  life.  She  was  so  little 
under  any  real  delusion  about  her  title  that  from  the 
time  she  realised  my  respect  for  her  spiritual  instincts 
she  forbade  me  to  kiss  her  hand,  or  to  address  her  as 
"your  Majesty."  She  suffered  terribly  from  the  constant 
companionship  of  lunatics,  some  of  whom  were  vicious, 
and  of  doctors  and  nurses,  all  of  whom  were  ignorant  of 

2 


1 8  Preface 

psychology,  and,  though  kindly  and  well-meaning,  often 
hideously  irreverent.  I  offered  to  procure  her  freedom 
by  taking  out  a  certificate  as  lunatic  attendant  and 
getting  her  consigned  to  my  care.  The  temptation  to 
consent  was  evidently  very  great.  But  she  had  scruples 
about  hampering  my  work  and  career ;  and,  after  a  few 
days  of  heroic  struggle  with  herself,  she  not  only  refused 
to  accept  my  offer,  but  gave  me  to  understand  that  the 
continuance  of  our  friendship  depended  on  my  abstain- 
ing in  future  from  putting  such  temptation  in  her  way. 
To  her  I  owe  nearly  all  that  I  know  about  adumbrations 
and  nostalgias ;  about  the  conditions  under  which 
hallucinations  become  fixed,  and  the  manner  in  which 
they  can  be  dispersed  ;  about  the  formation  of  protective 
optical  illusions  and  the  prevention  of  dangerous  delu- 
sions. She  gave  me  my  first  clear  insight  into  the 
systematic  use  of  Oriental  imagery  as  an  organic 
scientific  notation.  To  her  also  I  owe — though  without 
her  knowledge — my  clear  perception  of  how  a  person 
like  myself  may  be  led  into  crime ;  for,  had  Frances  ever 
for  one  hour  so  far  lost  her  head  as  to  express  a  wish  to 
be  avenged,  there  is  no  telling  what  I  might  not  have 
been  tempted  to  do.  But  Frances  never  lost  her  self- 
control  or  her  spiritual  judgment;  her  own  influence 
over  others  gave  to  her  both  an  awe-struck  sense  of  her 
own  responsibility,  and  a  respectful  sympathy  with  all 
persons  in  any  kind  of  responsible  position.  Though 
revolutionary  in  every  fibre  of  her  being,  she  would 
never  allow  a  disrespectful  word  to  be  said  of  any  official 
person  in  her  presence  without  rebuking  it. 

"  Vengeance   is    Mine,"    says    the    Eternal    Pulsator. 
Had  Frances  remained  at  large,  she  would  have  been 


Preface  19 

known  only  as  a  pious  and  well-meaning,  but  somewhat 
eccentric,  lady.  By  incarcerating  her,  her  guardian 
made  of  her  a  valuable  factor  in  that  great  chain  of 
inter-racial  sympathies  which  is  so  rapidly  making  all 
races  subject  to  the  British  crown  aware  of  certain 
subtle  dangers  to  which  they  expose  themselves  by 
trusting  English  officials. 

There  was  another  woman,  whose  name  shall  be 
wrapped  in  silence.  She  was  the  "illegitimate" 
daughter  of  a  well-to-do  man.  She  refused  to  accept 
from  her  "honourable"  father  the  insolent  patronage 
which  such  men  offer  to  those  who  have  inherited 
their  own  pride;  preferring  to  face  the  struggle  for 
life  in  a  world  of  strangers.  She  bequeathed,  to 
some  who  have  helped  me,  a  large  share  of  hereditary 
intellectual  power,  and  a  determination  to  base  a  true 
morality  on  solid  fact,  and  not  to  be  satisfied  with  any 
imitation  constructed  of  parchments  tied  together  with 
red  tape,  smeared  over  with  white  paint,  and  stuffed 
with  corruption. 

MARY  EVEREST  BOOLE. 


THE   FORGING  OF  PASSION 
INTO  POWER 

CHAPTER  I 

INTRODUCTORY 

This  is  a  book  for  those  who  have  leisure  to  think. 
To  the  hasty  reader  and  the  careless  critic  it  has 
nothing  to  say,  beyond  bidding  them  God-speed  in  the 
perusal  of  any  kind  of  literature  which  suits  their  state 
of  mind. 

I  am  writing  for  such  persons  as  these : — 

For  the  voyager  to  far  countries,  who  can  take  one  or 
two  small  volumes  in  his  small  luggage.  It  may  help 
him  to  prepare  for  a  better  understanding  of  the  relation 
between  the  people  he  is  leaving  behind  and  those 
whose  acquaintance  he  is  about  to  make. 

For  the  young  mother,  who  has  a  little  time  to  read 
on  Sunday  evening  after  her  baby  has  gone  to  sleep, 
and  plenty  of  time  to  think  over  what  she  has  read 
while  she  makes  its  clothes  or  holds  it  to  her  breast. 
It  may  help  her  to  steer  the  child  into  something  like 
its  true  place  in  the  world  in  which  it  will  have  to  live. 

For  the  cloistered  sister  who  is  beginning  to  wonder 
why   she   cut   herself  off   from    the  joys   which   other 


22    The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

women  prize — provided,  that  is  to  say,  that  she  has 
the  courage  to  ask  the  question  of  God,  and  wait  to 
hear  His  answer ;  not  thinking  it  necessary  to  stun 
herself,  as  the  heathen  do,  with  vain  repetitions  of  pious 
statements  which  she  does  not  believe  but  only  thinks 
she  ought  to  believe. 

For  the  lady  of  the  demi-monde'. — provided  she  has 
the  courage  to  face  her  situation  calmly  in  the  morning 
hours;  not  thinking  it  necessary  to  stun  herself  all 
day  long  with  noise,  drink,  affectations,  and  the  strum- 
ming of  unmusical  tunes  on  some  unmusical  instrument. 

For  the  man  or  woman  condenmed  by  circumstances 
either  to  a  life  of  monotonous  drudgery  or  to  one  of 
dreary  idleness,  or  to  a  still  more  dreary  round  of  so- 
called  social  duties,  which  are  not  really  due  to  anyone, 
and  of  so-called  social  pleasures  which  do  not  please. 

For  the  man  who  knows  he  has  something  to  tell  the 
world,  but  has  not  found  his  way  to  any  adequate  mode 
of  utterance. 

For  the  paralytic  confined  to  his  chair. 

For  the  felon  confined  in  a  gaol. 

And,  last  and  chiefly,  for  the  patient  in  the  lunatic 
asylum. 

For  any  and  all  who  have,  temporarily  or  finally, 
drifted  out  of  the  main  current  of  social  life  into  some 
stagnant  (and  perhaps  muddy)  backwater. 

Whoever  the  reader  is,  he  or  she  will  find  the  under- 
standing of  the  book  much  facilitated  by  interposing  at 
least  one  night  between  the  end  of  one  chapter  and 
the  beginning  of  the  next. 

Dear  friends,  never  suppose  that,  because  you  your- 
selves  are   unable   to   swim   in    mid-channel,  therefore 


Introductory  23 

you  are  cut  off  from  the  great  joy  of  delivering  your 
message  to  your  fellow-men  and  women. 

Thoughts  are  facts ;  and  they  can  pass  through 
barriers  impenetrable  to  human  bodies. 

Let  me  help  you,  if  I  can,  to  understand  yourselves. 
If  you  once  do  that,  believe  me,  you  will  somehow 
succeed  in  getting  the  world  to  understand  you. 

I  want  to  help  you,  if  you  will  allow  me,  to  learn 
the  art  (for  it  is  an  art,  quite  as  much  so  as  music  and 
painting)  of  the  orderly  arrangement  of  thought. 

It  is  a  common  mistake  to  suppose  that  the  Art  of 
Thinking  can  be  learned  only  by  thinking  of  what  are 
called  "learned"  topics.  This  is  not  the  case.  The 
finest  music  is  made  not  by  clashing  together  heavy 
masses  of  gems  or  of  precious  metals,  but  by  "  scraping 
the  guts  of  a  cat  with  hairs  from  the  tail  of  a  horse." 
But  you  must  do  the  scraping  according  to  the  Laws 
of  Music. 

The  Art  of  Thinking  can  be  learned,  and  practised, 
with  very  homely  and  even  unbeautiful  material  to 
think  about.  It  is  said  that  the  finest  poetry  in  the 
Yiddish  language  was  written  by  a  man  who  toiled 
seventeen  hours  a  day  in  a  factory  and  lived  in  a 
hideous  tenement  of  New  York. 

A  man  in  prison  once  wrote  to  a  woman  outside : — 

"  Stone  walls  do  not  a  prison  make. 
Nor  iron  bars  a  cage  ; 
Minds,  innocent  and  quiet,  take 
That  for  a  hermitage." 

People  who  are  well-to-do,  free  and  cultured,  and 
who  live  in  beautiful   surroundings,  admire  those  lines 


24   The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

and  find  enjoyment  in  reading  them  ;  but  you,  who 
are  in  prison,  say,  and  say  truly,  that  they  bring  no 
message  of  comfort  to  you ;  stone  walls  do  make  a 
prison  for  you,  and  you  see  no  use  in  pretending  to 
deny  it. 

You  are  quite  right.  Those  who  offer  you  things 
written  by  other  people  by  way  of  consolation,  mistake, 
it  seems  to  me,  the  whole  lie  of  the  situation.  Can  you 
imagine  the  delight  of  writing  those  verses ;  of  feeling 
the  music  of  them  flow  into  one  from  some  Source  Unseen, 
and  through  one  out  into  the  world  ?  The  material  out 
of  which  the  man  built  up  his  verses  consisted  of: — stone 
walls  and  iron  bars.  Whatever  the  material,  the  joy  of 
the  artist  in  the  act  of  creating  harmony  under 
inspiration  is  the  same. 

"  I  am  a  lonely  man,"  said  he  ; 

"  The  storm-tossed  mariner,  alone, 
Echoing  back  the  wild  wind's  moan, 
Breathes  not  my  loneliness,"  said  he. 
"  All  alone  ;  all  unknown  ; 
Like  the  sun,  like  the  moon." 

"There  is,"  I  said,  "a  loneliness 
That  lights  the  soul  like  fireflies 
Dim  twinkling  under  darkening  skies  ; 
'Tis  near  akin  to  happiness. 
All  alone  it  hath  shone. 
Like  the  sun,  like  the  moon." 

"  I'm  not  a  manly  man,"  said  he  ; 
"  A  worm  upon  the  path,  I  fear 
The  fight  for  life  is  too  severe. 
They've  crushed  me  under  foot,"  said  he. 
"  All  alone,  nothing  won, 
Myself  I  seem  to  shun." 


Introductory  25 


"A  worm  there  is,  a  worm,"  said  I, 

"  That  strives  to  ghmmer  on  the  earth, 
A  light  for  all.     Is  that  not  worth 
A  life  as  in  the  changeful  sky? 

Shines  the  moon,  shines  the  sun 
Not  unknown  unto  One." 


The  writer  of  these  lines  had  no  literary  skill,  and 
could  not  write  good  rhyme  and  rhythm  ;  but  he  could, 
and  did,  weave  the  symptoms  and  symbols  of  mere 
melancholic  passion  into  exquisitely  organic  imagery  ; 
he  translated  the  sense  of  hopeless  loneliness  into  the  use- 
ful solitude  of  the  light-house,  and  the  sensation  of  being 
abject  like  a  worm  into  the  vision  of  a  glow-worm.  Do 
you  think  he  felt  abject  or  lonely  while  he  was  writing 
these  lines  ?  His  passion  had  become  transformed  into 
power. 

Perhaps  some  reader  may  feel  inclined  to  say  that  his 
mind  is  neither  innocent  nor  quiet ;  that  he  has  nothing 
to  think  of  except  anger,  hatred,  and  unsatisfied  lusts. 
That  is  not  quite  true  of  anybody ;  still,  let  that  pass. 
I  am  neither  parson  nor  moralist;  it  is  no  part  of  my 
function  to  tell  you  that  such  passions  are  wicked.  They 
are,  in  their  own  way,  not  bad  material  for  art.  If  you 
have  nothing  to  think  about  except  stormy  passions 
and  desires,  think  about  them  ;  but  think  about  them 
truly  according  to  the  laws  of  your  own  thinking 
machinery.  We  cannot  all  acquire  skill  in  weaving 
words  into  harmonious  verse,  but  we  can  all  be  artists 
in  thought  and  group  ideas  harmoniously.  Whatever 
you  have  to  think  about,  learn  to  think  according  to  the 
Laws  of  Thought. 

If  you  are  on   a  long  voyage  across  a  monotonous 


2  6    The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

ocean,  learn  to  think  artistically,  not  only  about  the  sea 
and  sky  and  the  sailors'  work,  but  also  about  the  fact  of 
monotony. 

If  you  have  become  a  criminal  after  being  brought  up 
"  respectably,"  as  it  is  called,  learn  to  think  artistically 
about  the  relations  and  the  contrast  between  what  is 
called  respectability  and  what  is  called  crime. 

If,  on  the  contrary,  you  were  brought  up  by  thief 
parents,  and  have  nothing  in  your  memory  but  a  life  of 
more  or  less  successful  dodging  of  the  police,  learn  to 
think  artistically  about  the  relations  between  your  class 
and  the  police : — there  is  plenty  that  needs  thinking  out 
in  that  matter,  and  the  world  would  be  the  better  for 
hearing  what  you  have  to  say  about  it. 

And  you,  young  mother,  you  at  least  have  plenty  of 
thought-material  close  at  hand,  in  your  baby's  cries  and 
smiles.  He  will  begin  to  cut  his  teeth  presently,  and 
the  first  use  he  will  wish  to  make  of  them  will  be  to 
bite  you.  You  have  to  decide  whether  you  will  allow 
him  to  do  so  or  not.  Decide  it  carefully,  according  to 
what  you  know  of  your  child's  heredity  ;  not  forgetting 
to  take  into  account  the  amount  of  your  own  stamina 
and  power  of  endurance.  Do  not  forget  that,  in  this 
matter  more  perhaps  than  in  any  other — 

"  As  we  chose  in  small  things  always 
We  must  choose  at  last  in  great ; 
For  'tis  then  the  gods  deny  us 
Our  own  hand  upon  our  fate." ' 

Now  you  are  going  to  ask  me  whether  or  not  you 
shall    let   baby  cut   his   teeth   upon  your  flesh !     How 

1  Mary  Ellen  Hinton. 


Introductory  27 

should  I  know?  I  am  an  artist,  not  a  quack-doctor 
with  a  universal  prescription  to  suit  all  constitutions. 
Whether  a  baby  ought  or  ought  not  to  bite  his  mother, 
depends,  as  I  said,  on  his  heredity  and  the  extent  of 
her  powers  of  endurance  ;  also  on  her  and  the  father's 
conception  of  the  meaning  and  use  of  family  life.  On 
the  father's  conception  especially.  I  am  trying  to  teach 
you,  not  a  code  suited  to  all  families,  but  the  Art  of 
Thinking  on  the  facts  presented  to  you  by  your  own 
life  and  circumstances. 

And  you,  whom  the  world  calls  mad,  you  at  least 
can  have  no  lack  of  material  for  thought.  And  you 
well  know — some  of  you — that  the  so-called  "sane" 
world  is  ignorant  of  much  which  you  have  seen,  and 
hideously  irreverent  to  much  that  you  feel  to  be  sacred. 
Pull  yourselves  together,  friends,  and  learn  to  deliver 
your  message  in  such-wise  that  the  outer  world  must 
listen,  and  revere.  You  do  not,  you  cannot,  doubt  the 
value  of  your  own  message  to  the  world  ;  many  of  you 
are  certified  "  megalomaniacs  "  because  you  cannot  be 
got  to  disbelieve  it.  What  you  most  long  for  is 
that  someone  in  the  outer  world  should  believe  in  it 
with  you.  Courage,  friends ;  I  believe  in  it, — because 
I  have  seen.  Now,  therefore,  let  us,  who  understand 
each  other,  learn  some  logic  together,  and  write  so 
that  the  world  shall  understand  something  of  which 
you  have  caught  a  glimpse,  and  which  you  know  to  be 
part  of  the  scientific  framework  round  which  must  be 
organised  anything  which  could  claim  the  right  to 
describe  itself  as  an  organic  art  of  thinking. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE   TRAINING   OF   THE   IMAGINATION 

For  learning  the  art  of  the  orderly  arrangement  of 
thought,  no  previous^Kv^O^ledge  is  necessary  of  logic 
or  of  any  science  whatever.  Whac  ib  necessary  is  a 
willingness  on  the  part  of  the  readers  not  to  iO^r^t  but 
to  aid  the  writer  in  furnishing  their  minds  with  simple 
imagery,  derived  from  various  departments  of  human 
life,  including  science. 

The  imagery  will  be  used,  not  in  order  to  prove  any 
doctrine,  but  to  facilitate  the  orderly  arrangement  of 
thought  material.  When  we  are  trying  to  put  our 
household  goods  in  order,  we  find  it  useful  to  provide 
ourselves  with  convenient  shelves,  racks,  and  hooks  on 
which  to  store  them  ;  when  we  are  trying  to  put  our 
thoughts  in  order,  we  find  it  advisable  to  fasten  up  in 
our  memories  a  convenient  framework  of  imagery  on 
which  we  can  register  our  thought-processes. 

Let  us  think  of  Time  as  a  mass  of  water  in  a  pool  or 

tank.     That  is  to  say,  Time  Past  is  the  water.     Time 

Future  shall  be  represented  by  the  air  above  it.     Water 

is  continually  coming  slowly  in  at  the  top  of  the  pool, 

and    trickling   away  below  into   cavernous   depths  out 

of  sight. 

The  surface  of  the  pool  represents  Time  Present. 
28 


The  Training  of  the  Imagination     29 

Now  let  us  represent  the  consciousness  of  an  individual 
by  a  stick  floating  at  the  surface  of  the  pool.  On  one 
end  of  the  stick  is  written  "Emotion  and  Sensation"; 
on  the  other,  "  Action  and  Influence." 

Please  get  this  idea  fixed  up  in  your  mind,  before 
you  read  any  further.  Little  precautions  of  this  kind 
go  a  great  way  towards  conferring  clearness  of  under- 
standing and  preventing  fogginess  and  misapprehension 
of  a  writer's  meaning.  Get  the  vision  fixed  quite  firmly  ; 
it  is  not  a  mere  ornament,  but  a  hook  on  which  you  are 
going,  presently,  to  hang  a  weight,  perhaps  a  heavy  one. 

We  have  supposed  the  stick  lying  flat  on  the  surface 
of  the  water.  As  long  as  it  does  so,  it  represents 
a  consciousness  lying  wholly  in  the  present  time. 

Doctors  and  other  teachers  sometimes  tell  us  very 
glibly  that  sanity  and  health,  and  all  that  deserves  to 
be  called  "  normal,"  consist  in  being  "  adapted  to  one's 
environment " ;  all  which  is  not  so  they  call  "  abnormal." 
This  mode  of  speaking  is  capable  of  being  interpreted 
in  two  senses.  As  usually  understood,  it  is  very  false, 
misleading  the  utterers  even  more  than  the  hearers 
— as  indeed  slip-shod  phrases  of  doubtful  meaning 
usually  do. 

Let  us  look  at  our  mind-picture  of  the  floating  stick. 

As  long  as  it  lies  horizontal  it  represents  what  we 
may  call  the  commonplace  condition  of  the  conscious- 
ness, which  is  what  some  people  really  mean  when  they 
use  such  words  as  "  sanity  "  and  "  health." 

The  most  commonplace  consciousness  wabbles  slightly 
up  and  down  at  times  ;  so  that  one  end  dips  a  little  way 
back,  or  down,  into  the  Past,  and  the  other  a  little 
way  forward,  or  up,  into  the  Future. 


3°   The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

But  there  are  other  conditions  of  consciousness  besides 
the  commonplace  ones : — genius,  asceticism,  insanity, 
idiocy,  criminal  tendency,  melancholy,  suicidal  mania, 
all  that  is  eccentric,  abnormal,  or  out  of  line  with  the 
commonplace  average  proceedings  of  the  age  in  which 
the  individual  lives.  All  of  these  can  be  represented  by 
a  more  serious  tilting  of  the  stick  ;  or  by  its  being  bent, 
or  half  broken,  so  that  both  ends  dip  at  once  into  the 
Past,  or  one  half  may  dip  into  the  Past  and  the  other 
still  be  in  the  Present. 

What  does  all  this  prove?  Nothing  whatever. 
What  is  it  leading  up  to  ?  I  do  not  know.  What  is  the 
use  of  it  all  ?  That  all  depends  on  the  use  which  you 
may  choose  to  make  of  it.  I  have  provided  the  entrance- 
hall  of  your  house  of  thought  with  a  rack,  such  as  my 
experience  has  shown  me  is  of  convenient  form  for 
arranging  things  on.  At  present,  our  business  is  to  see 
that  the  rack  is  in  proper  order  and  well  fixed  up. 
Exercise  your  imagination  at  your  leisure,  in  picturing — 
or,  as  it  is  sometimes  called,  visualising — the  floating 
stick.  Shut  your  eyes  and  see  it — first  in  one  condition, 
then  another.  See  it  stiff  and  straight,  then  bent;  then 
half  broken.  Picture  it  always  with  its  labels  on :  at 
one  end  "  Emotion  and  Sensation,"  at  the  other 
"  Action  and  Influence."  Picture  it,  first  with  one  end 
dipping  down,  then  the  other;  then  bent  so  that  both 
ends  dip ;  with  the  emotion  end  floating,  then  the  other 
end.  Go  on  with  this  exercise  till  the  slightest  exertion 
of  your  will  sufifices  to  put  clearly  before  your  mental 
vision  a  picture  of  the  stick  in  any  condition  or  position 
that  you  think  of 

Now,  the  problem  of  forging  Passion  into  Power   is 


The  Training  of  the  Imagination     3 1 

that  of  changing  any  position  of  the  stick  which  repre- 
sents a  condition  of  the  consciousness  that  is  not 
commonplace  and  that  is  undesirable,  into  some 
position  which  represents  a  desirable  one.  Which 
positions  represent  undesirable  states  and  which  desir- 
able ones,  we  shall  see  as  we  go  on.  For  the  present, 
the  business  on  hand  is  to  familiarise  your  imagination 
with  the  stick  in  all  its  possible  positions. 


CHAPTER  III 

ECONOMY   OF   FORCE 

Surely  the  secret  of  Moral  Agriculture  is  to  hitch 
one's  Plough  to  the  Great  Pulsator  and  make  manure  of 
the  devil. 

There  is  no  cure  for  the  world's  evils  except  linking 
them  together  in  suitably  assorted  pairs,  in  such-wise 
that  they  neutralise  the  evilness  of  each  other. 

There  can  be  no  adequate  supply  of  heat-force  till  we 
convert  into  heat  the  great  devastating  meteorological 
forces. 

There  will  be  no  stop  to  the  supply  of  criminal  classes 
till  the  brutal  and  rowdy  type  of  hooligan  is  trained  as 
magnetic  healer  to  the  over-sensitive,  over-intellectual, 
over-conscientious,  over-refined  type  of  man  and  woman. 

There  will  be  no  stopping  the  spread  of  insanity  till 
different  types  of  abnormal  neurosis  act  as  magnetic 
healers  to  each  other. 

There  can  be  no  sound  scheme  of  education  till  we 
know  how  to  assort  children  in  pairs  and  link  them  so 
that  they  give  each  other  a  strong  impetus  towards  some 
desirable  end. 

There  is  no  real  solution  of  the  sanitation  problem  or 
the  food-supply  problem  till  we  devise  good  systems  of 
sewage-farming  and  of  earth-to-earth  burial.  I  am  glad 
32 


Economy  of  Force  3  3 

to  take  this  opportunity  of  stating  my  conviction  that 
cremation  and  burying  under  stone  are  polar  mistakes. 
Cremation  may  be  necessary  in  cases  of  zymotic  disease 
until  we  have  devised  something  better.  But  I  feel 
convinced  that  the  scientific  solution  is  that  every  carcase 
of  man  and  beast  shall  be  buried  underground  and  a 
fruit-tree  planted  over  it.  The  superstition  against 
eating  fruit  grown  on  the  dead  bodies  of  one's  friends 
is  a  good  specimen  of  the  wasteful  and  distracting  kind 
of  idolatry  which  keeps  the  world  in  bondage.  What 
are  fruit-trees  for,  if  not  to  forge  and  transform  cannibal- 
istic selfishness  into  sacramental  joy  ?  While  we  eat 
meat,  we  are  obliged  to  cut  the  lives  of  creatures  short, 
because  those  which  die  a  natural  death  are  unsuitable 
for  food.  But  fruit  lives  on  that  which  has  died  at  its 
own  time. 


CHAPTER  IV 

DESTRUCTIVE   MANIA 

We  are  going  to  think  to-day  about  a  Passion  which  is 
neither  innocent  nor  quiet.  It  is  known  by  many 
names.  It  occurs  in  nearly  all  small  children,  and  is 
then  called  "love  of  mischief."  In  boys  between  the 
ages  of  seven  and  twelve  it  is  called  either  "  cruelty  and 
spite  "  or  "  fine  manly  spirit,"  according  to  the  religious 
and  moral  point  of  view  of  the  speaker. 

In  quite  commonplace  persons  it  begins  at  about 
twelve  years  old  to  die  down  or  be  absorbed,  recurring 
afterwards  only  in  occasional  gentle  oscillations.  When 
one  of  these  mild  fits  comes  on,  the  individual,  if  wealthy, 
takes  a  few  days  or  weeks  of  shooting  at  birds  or 
beasts  reared  on  purpose.  If  poor,  he  flings  stones  at 
sparrows,  or  goes  rat-hunting ;  or  teases  his  mother  or 
sister;  or  punches  the  head  of  his  little  brother.  But 
in  individuals  who  are  more  "out  of  the  common  "  the 
dip  of  the  stick  is  deeper  and  more  serious. 

If  one  of  these  larger  oscillations  seizes  a  Malay,  he 
is  said  to  "  run  amok  "  and  is  hanged  by  the  English. 
In  a  regiment  of  English  soldiers,  it  is  called  "  martial 
ardour,"  and  rewarded  with  medals  and  public  receptions. 
If  it  seizes  a  wealthy  Englishman,  he  provides  himself 
with  elaborate  killing  apparatus  and  goes  off  to  shoot 
34 


Destructive  Mania  35 

big  game,  and  is  called  an  "adventurous  spirit."  If  it 
seizes  a  band  of  hobbledehoys  of  the  so-called  "  working 
class,"  they  come  in  collision  with  the  police  and  the 
orderliness  of  the  town,  and  are  called  hooligans.  If 
it  comes  with  special  violence  to  an  adult,  he  makes  a 
murderous  assault  on  somebody,  and  the  passion  is 
described  in  the  newspapers  either  as  vile  and  brutal 
violence,  or  as  homicidal  mania,  according  to  the  taste 
and  fancy  of  the  doctors  who  give  evidence  at  his  trial. 
In  the  former  case  he  is  hanged;  in  the  latter  he  is 
confined  at  Broadmoor  "during  his  Majesty's  pleasure." 
And  there,  to  all  outward  seeming,  is  an  end  of  his 
influence  on  society. 

(You  and  I,  friends,  know  very  well  that  there  is  not 
an  end  of  his  influence.  What  is  the  good  of  pretending 
to  believe  that  which  we  know  is  not  true  ?  You  in  the 
condemned  cell  know  very  well  that  the  world  will 
be,  in  some  respects,  different  hereafter,  according  to 
whether  you  do  or  do  not  pull  yourself  together  and 
think  clearly  during  the  few  days  you  still  have  to  live 
on  earth.) 

All  the  above-mentioned  names  denote  conditions 
not  indeed  exactly  similar.  They  differ  as  the  same  note 
differs  when  played  on  violin,  pianoforte,  trumpet  or 
flute.  The  differences  are  due  to  overtones,  or  colour- 
tones.  The  relation  between  them  concerns  those  whose 
business  it  is  to  orchestrate,  or  organise,  that  complex 
symphony  known  as  human  society.  Let  us  hope  they 
understand  the  delicate  intricacies  of  their  work.  For 
us,  the  business  on  hand  is  simpler ;  we  have  to  find  out 
what  our  note  itself  is  by  the  help  of  a  simple  tuning- 
fork. 


36    The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

What  is  the  impulse  to  kill,  to  hurt,  to  destroy  ? 

For  countless  generations  the  existence  of  any  tribe 
depended  on  all  the  male  members  of  it  (at  least)  hunting 
habitually.  To  kill  was  the  primary  duty ;  the  penalty 
for  neglecting  it  was : — starvation  for  oneself  and  one's 
wife  and  children,  as  well  as  more  or  less  of  injury  to 
one's  tribe. 

Try  to  make  a  mind-picture  of  this  state  of  things. 
One's  livelihood  depended  on  being  able  to  kill,  and 
skilful  at  killing.  The  man  who  disliked  that  business 
was  an  object  of  contempt.  He  who  was  slack  or 
indifferent  about  it  was  an  idler,  a  fool.  All  respectabil- 
ity, fame,  honour  and  glory  centred  round  extra  clever- 
ness in,  and  love  of,  killing  creatures. 

Just  think  of  it !  The  man  who  could  see  a  rabbit  or 
pheasant  without  trying  to  kill  it  took  the  same  rank 
in  the  estimation  of  his  neighbours  as  does  now  the 
vagabond  loafer  who  leaves  his  family  to  starve  or  be 
supported  by  the  parish. 

Then  there  arose  quarrels  between  different  tribes  of 
men.  The  safety  of  one's  wife  and  children,  as  well  as 
one's  duty  to  one's  tribe,  depended  on  one's  being 
skilful  in  killing,  and  willing  to  kill,  men.  The  man 
who  could  see  a  member  of  an  alien  tribe  without 
trying  to  hurt  him  was  regarded  as  we  now  regard  the 
mother  who  is  slack  in  ridding  her  children  of  vermin, 
or  in  disinfecting  after  an  invasion  of  fever-microbes. 

There  were,  in  those  days,  neither  butchers  nor  stand- 
ing army;  to  kill  was  the  duty  of  every  male,  and  of 
many  females  as  well,  for  countless  generations. 

And  we  have  to  remember  that  the  finer  and  more 
perfect  the  specimen,  whether  of  rival  or  of  prey,  the 


Destructive  Mania  37 

more  emphatically  it  became  the  duty  of  the  good  man 
to  exterminate  it.  Traces  of  this  principle  linger  here 
and  there  in  various  strange  little  freaks  of  sensuous 
pleasure  which  students  of  sensation  have  noticed.  We 
all  do  homage  to  it  when  we  try  and  make  our  dinner 
tables  "  look  attractive."  We  profess  to  be  shocked  at 
the  ruffian  who  is  prompted  by  the  beauty  of  a  picture 
to  poke  his  stick  through  the  canvas  ;  but  we  all  expect 
our  lady  guests  to  be  stimulated  by  the  beauty  of  our 
peach  to  stick  teeth  into  it,  by  the  decorative  skill  of  our 
cook  to  demolish  her  works  of  art.  This  is  the  mild 
form,  suited  to  our  present  state  of  civilisation,  of  the 
impulse  which  makes  a  certain  kind  of  person  poke  holes 
in  pictures,  scribble  in  valuable  books  in  public  libraries, 
and  chip  bits  off  beautiful  statues  and  historic  buildings. 

What  we  have  to  do  is  to  register  and  fix  in  our  minds 
the  idea  that  every  time  the  mistress  of  a  house  sanctions 
her  table  and  the  food  on  it  being  made  to  look  beauti- 
ful, she  is  recognising  in  her  family  and  guests  the 
existence  of  that  same  instinct  which,  in  some  of  its 
manifestations,  we  call  ruffianly  brutality ;  the  instinct, 
namely,  which  causes  the  presence  of  what  we  feel  to  be 
beautiful,  i.e.  the  finished  product  of  nature's  evolution 
or  man's  toil,  to  act  as  a  stimulus  to  the  desire  to  crush 
and  to  destroy.  In  the  case  of  the  peach,  the  ancient 
instinct  necessary  for  the  self-preservation  of  the  tribe 
has  been  transmuted  into  an  artistic  refinement  which 
tends  towards  the  higher  education  of  the  race ;  in  the 
case  of  the  iconoclast,  into  a  form  unsuited  to  the  present 
conditions  of  society,  and  antagonistic  to  its  higher 
evolution. 

Time  has  gone  on  and  things  have  changed.     It  is  no 


38    The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

longer  everyone's  duty  to  kill.  And  the  consciousness 
of  some  people  floats  on  that  surface  which  we  call  the 
Present,  or  only  slightly  wabbles  away  from  that  surface. 
They  know  nothing  of  the  Past  except  from  reading 
books — books  mostly  written  at  the  present  time,  imbued 
with  the  feeling  of  the  Present.  Or  if  the  book  is  old 
these  people  do  not  understand  it,  for  their  own  conscious- 
ness supplies  no  clue  to  its  meaning. 

But  there  are  some  whose  very  flesh,  their  muscles, 
nerves,  brain-tissue,  are  saturated  with  the  instinct  of 
fidelity  to  the  Past.     They  understand ! 

We  have  one  instance  of  this  fleshly  fidelity  to  the 
Past  in  the  existence  of  what  are  called  dowsers.  For 
many  generations,  there  being  no  books,  all  scientific 
principles  were  taught  by  object-lessons.  A  large 
number  of  these  lessons  were  connected  with  rituals 
carried  on  by  means  of  freshly-cut  branches  or  wands, 
which  were  moved  about  in  various  positions.  A  main 
subject  of  science,  a  main  motive  for  study,  were  supplied 
by  the  need  for  finding  water  or  metallic  ores.  Most 
things  in  Nature  give  off  some  effluvium  or  force  peculiar 
to  themselves ;  and  these  forces  affect  us,  often  without 
our  knowing  it.  And  there  are  still  people,  sometimes 
whole  families,  whose  arms  begin  to  tingle  when  they 
touch  fresh-cut  branches  of  certain  trees ;  and  whose 
fingers  twitch  if,  while  holding  the  branch,  they  pass 
over  water  or  a  vein  of  metal.  The  dowser  is  one  in 
whom  fidelity  to  what  was  the  sacred  duty  of  his 
ancestors  is  embedded  in  nerve  and  muscle ;  he  has  a 
fleshly  lust  to  repeat  their  ceremony.  The  word  "  lust," 
we  must  remember,  means  "  list,"  desire,  impulse.  When- 
ever we  wish  to  do  anything,  not  for  any  reason,  but 


Destructive  Mania  39 

only  because  we  "  like  "  to  do  it,  find  it  agreeable,  we 
are  gratifying  a /«j-/.  If  our  nerves  and  muscles  desire 
to  do  the  thing,  it  is  a  fleshly  lust.  Much  confusion  has 
been  caused  by  using  the  words  "  fleshly  lust"  only  in  a 
bad  sense.  The  dowser  has  a  fleshly  lust  to  twitch  his 
stick  when  he  passes  over  water.  At  the  touch  of  the 
water's  subtle  effluvium  the  sensation  end  of  his  conscious- 
ness takes  a  plunge  back  into  the  Past.  When  I  touch 
a  dowsing  rod  my  consciousness  takes  a  plunge  into  the 
Past.  I  have  never  tried  to  find  water;  but  I  feel  the 
tingle  in  my  arms ;  and  the  stick  has  often  helped  me 
to  see  ancient  mathematicians  and  other  wizards  at  their 
v.'ork.  Much  of  the  best  of  my  published  work  on 
mathematical  teaching  has  been  done  by  the  "  accidental  " 
stimulus  of  touching  a  divining  or  dowsing  rod. 

I  have  had  homicidal  impulse  at  the  touch  of  other 
stimuli.  When  I  was  quite  young,  I  used  to  speculate 
on  the  problem  why  I  did  not  try  to  kill  someone  who 
worried  me.  It  was  not  love  of  my  parents  that 
hindered  me ;  in  those  moods  I  was  incapable  of  love. 
It  was  not  fear  of  consequences  ;  in  those  moods  I  was 
incapable  of  fear.  It  was  not  regard  for  God ;  I  con- 
sidered that  God  made  me  as  I  was  and  could  not 
reasonably  be  angry  with  anything  I  did.  It  was — I 
always  came  back  to  the  same  conclusion — it  was  that 
I  thought  that  if  I  killed  anyone  the  police  or  the  hang- 
man or  someone  would  stop  my  working  for  algebra. 
Besides,  I  felt  that  all  stormy  passions  in  themselves 
interfered  between  me  and  algebra.  Hate  and  revenge- 
fulness,  as  well  as  love  and  fear,  vanished,  like  burned 
paper,  when  they  threatened  to  interfere  between  me 
and  algebra. 


40    The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

That  means,  as  I  now  know,  that  some  wizard  ancestor 
of  mine  had  stronger  hold  on  my  brain-tissue  than  the 
ancestors  whose  business  was  killing  people. 

You,  my  friend  in  the  condemned  cell,  were  in 
different  case  from  me ;  perhaps  you  had  no  mathe- 
matical ancestor  ;  or,  if  you  had,  his  hold  on  you  was 
weak. 

But  surely  there  is  no  crime  and  no  disgrace  in 
having  had  a  preponderance  of  ancestors  who  did  their 
duty  in  protecting  and  feeding  their  families  instead  of 
mooning  over  pencils  and  compasses. 

What,  then,  was  your  crime?  That  no  one  showed 
you  how  to  forge  your  Passion  of  ancestral  impulse  into 
Power  to  do  something  useful  for  the  Present  or  the 
Future.  No  one  showed  you  how.  But  that  negative 
fact  is  the  crime  of  collective  Humanity,  not  that  of  any 
individual.  You  and  I  will  do  our  best  to  redeem  it,  by 
showing  someone  else  how. 

Eugene  Sue  has  done  something  in  that  direction,  by 
asserting  that  the  man  who  has  fits  of  "homicidal 
mania "  {i.e.  impulse  to  kill  folks)  ought  to  be  trained 
as  a  butcher. 

Feather-headed  people  who  look  only  on  the  surface  of 
things  will  say  that  butchers  who  like  to  kill  must  be 
brutes.  People  who  do  what  they  like,  when  they  like, 
as  they  like,  and  only  because  they  like,  do,  it  is  true, 
become  not  really  honest  brutes,  but  something  which  it 
is  an  insult  to  a  decent  wild  beast  to  compare  it  with. 
But  those  who  are  trained  to  do  only  what  they  dislike 
become  machines.  Those  who  are  trained  to  do  what 
they  like,  when  they  ought,  and  because  they  ought, 
become  artists.     The   man  who  dislikes  killing  things. 


Destructive  Mania  4^ 

if  he  becomes  a  butcher  for  convenience,  or  from  a 
mistaken  sense  of  duty,  thinks  as  little  as  may  be  of  his 
trade ;  works  carelessly ;  perhaps  drowns  thought  in 
drink  or  dissipation  ;  kills  badly  ;  inflicts  suffering.  But 
the  man  who  loves  to  kill  owing  to  latent  ancestral 
passion  for  serving  the  community  by  killing  can  be 
trained  to  fix  his  whole  mind  on  the  business  of  killing 
in  the  manner  which  the  best  sense  of  the  community 
decrees  to  be  the  best. 

Eugene  Sue's  suggestion,  therefore,  is  not  quite  as  wild 
as  it  seems  to  some  people. 

It  will  be  well,  just  here,  to  shut  your  eyes  and 
meditate  for  a  few  moments  on  the  floating  stick. 

Crooked  or  broken  sticks  can  dip  one  end  down  into 
the  Past,  while  the  other  floats  in  the  Present.  Or  both 
ends  may  hang  down  into  the  Past.  But  a  straight, 
firm  stick  cannot  dip  one  end  into  the  Past  without  the 
other  rising  into  the  Future.  And  its  rise  into  the 
Future  will  be  exactly  proportional  to  its  dip  into  the 
Past. 

What  does  this  prove  ?  Nothing,  I  repeat ;  nothing. 
I  am  not  proving  theories,  but  furnishing  your  imagina- 
tion with  instruments  for  the  organising  of  thought 
material. 


CHAPTER  V 

SUICIDAL   MANIA 

In  the  north  of  Europe  and  of  Asia  (and  probably  also 
in  other  parts  of  the  world)  there  used  to  prevail  an  idea 
that  it  was  cowardly  and  selfish  to  lay  on  one's  tribe  the 
burden  of  one's  support  after  one  could  no  longer  serve 
it  by  hunting  or  in  war.  Everyone  who  survived  till 
old  age  was  bound  to  kill  himself  or  be  put  to  death  by 
his  friends.  The  imagination  of  all  young  persons,  for 
many  generations,  was  filled  with  the  idea  of  suicide 
as  both  a  duty  and  an  inevitable  fate.  What  wonder, 
then,  that  in  some  families  a  sudden  fit  of  rever- 
sion to  ancestral  type  produces  an  impulse  towards 
suicide? 

It  was  also  desirable  to  prevent  the  tribe  from  being 
burdened  with  the  weakly.  Infanticide  (as  a  preferable 
alternative  to  the  desertion  and  exposure  of  the  weakly 
young)  thus  became  the  duty  of  many  parents  ;  of  many 
for  whom,  owing  to  the  strength  of  their  parental 
affection,  infanticide  partook  far  more  of  the  character 
of  a  higher  kind  of  suicide  than  of  anything  which  can 
legitimately  be  called  homicide.  The  killing  of  a  weakly 
child  is  now  a  crime.  The  impulse  towards  killing  a 
beloved  infant  is  (rightly)  now  considered  a  symptom  of 
in-sanity,    i.e.    a  not   healthy   form    of  reversion  ;    not 


Suicidal  Mania  43 

rational  action,  but  the  "  fleshly  lust  "  (reversion  to  former 
duty). 

The  force  stored  up  in  ancestral  infanticidal  impulse 
needs  guiding  towards  present  uses. 

The  guiding  of  it  has  been  made  difficult,  owing  to 
the  fact  that  popular  feeling  in  the  matter  has  been 
distorted  by  ministers  of  varying  religions:  distorted, 
indeed,  in  three  ways.  When  the  community  requires 
from  the  individual  any  painful  sacrifice,  the  feelings  of 
the  person  called  on  to  make  it  are  soothed  and  narcot- 
ised by  an  appeal  to  the  religious  emotions.  Cutting 
one's  own  throat  because  one  is  old  is  called  "  cutting 
Runes  to  Odin  "  ;  infanticide  is  called  "  giving  one's  baby 
back  to  the  tribal  god."  This,  of  itself,  while  consoling 
to  the  immediate  sufferer,  tends  to  deepen  the  tendency 
to  repeat  the  same  action.  But,  besides  this,  priests, 
from  a  spirit  of  routine,  continue  to  claim  the  accustomed 
sacrifice  to  the  gods,  after  the  well-being  of  the  tribe  no 
longer  requires  it ;  this,  by  unnecessarily  prolonging  the 
custom,  gives  to  the  atavistic  impulse  an  extra  strong 
hold  on  posterity. 

At  last,  the  incongruity  between  the  conscience  of  the 
tribe  and  the  priestly  code  of  ethics  becomes  too  glaring 
to  be  any  longer  tolerated  ;  the  strain  reaches  a  breaking 
point ;  a  revolution  or  movement  of  reform  takes 
place,  and  a  fresh  set  of  priests  are  appointed,  willing 
to  preach,  as  duty  to  the  gods,  whatever  customs  suit 
the  present  condition  of  the  tribal  conscience.  But  these 
new  priests  are  not  content  to  enjoin  the  new  code  of 
duty,  and  explain  that  the  old  is  now  out  of  date ;  they 
talk  of  the  former  duties  as  "  sins,"  and  treat  the 
"  fleshly  "  impulse  to  revert  to  those  duties  as  a  proof  of 


44    The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

man's  "  fallen  "  and  "  corrupt "  nature.  They  even  go  the 
length  of  asserting  that  the  gods  who  enjoined  the 
sacrifice  when  it  was  a  real  tribal  duty  necessary  for  the 
very  existence  of  the  community  were  not  true  gods 
but  "  devils."  They  thus  blur  the  lines  of  historic  feeling 
and  confuse  the  consciousness  of  the  new  generation, 
making  physical  fidelity  to  ancestral  type  a  disgrace 
instead  of  a  glory. 

It  is  a  matter  of  historic  fact  that,  though  martyrdom 
and  the  fact  of  being  for  a  time  despised  and  rejected 
may  ennoble  an  individual,  yet  whatever  is  chronically 
thrust  into  darkness  tends  to  take  on  de-graded  and 
distorted  forms.  If  the  atavistic  consciousness  is  habit- 
ually despised  it  becomes  degraded  ;  distorted  conscious- 
ness involves  distorted  nerve  and  brain  conditions,  and 
converts  what  was  a  mere  harmless  reposeful  plunge 
into  the  Past  into  some  non-natural  and  possibly  novel 
mode  of  truly  vicious  action.  All  real  vices  and  non- 
natural  lusts  are  generated  by  this  moral  perversion. 
Honour  thine  Ancestral  Past  that  thine  own  days  may 
be  long  and  healthy.  Instead  of  despising  our  ancestral 
modes  of  life,  we  should  revert  to  them,  whenever 
possible,  in  all  ways  not  harmful  in  the  Present.  Do 
not  children  stand  the  strain  of  the  modern  school-life 
all  the  better  for  spending  vacations  camping  out  of 
doors,  picnicking  in  woods,  and  climbing  trees,  like  their 
savage  ancestors  ? 

The  first  step  towards  the  eradication  from  our  people 
of  the  suicidal  and  infanticidal  manias  should  be  the 
instituting  of  religious  services  in  honour  of  those  who, 
in  the  past,  killed  themselves  or  their  offspring  for  the 
good    of    the   tribe.     This   would    serve   to   arrest   the 


Suicidal  Mania  45 

tendency  to  act  on  mere  nervous  impulse,  because  it 
would  deepen  the  sense  that  one's  life  and  those  of  one's 
children  are  not  one's  own,  to  deal  with  according  to 
one's  fleshly  impulses,  but  the  property  of  the  com- 
munity, to  be  held  in  trust  for  it,  and  disposed  of  only 
in  accordance  with  its  real  needs. 


CHAPTER  VI 

MORALITY   AND   ART 

James  Hinton  gave  the  title  "  The  Art  of  Thinking  "  to 

one  of  his  essays.     The  words  were  chosen  deliberately 

and  with  the  intention  of  their  being  taken  in  the  full 

sense    of    their    literal    meaning,   the    artistic    use    of 

thought.     To  arrive  at  a  full  sense  of  what  this  implies, 

we  must  come  to  an  understanding  as  to  what  is  meant 

by  the  word  Art. 

The  cultivation  of  any  physical  sense  passes  through 

three  principal  stages  or  modes  of  use.     There  is,  first, 

discrimination  evoked  in  response  to  some  necessity  for 

self-protection.     A  keen  power  of  discriminating  among 

colours,  or  shapes,  or  sounds,  helps  an  animal  or  a  savage 

man  in  finding  his  prey,  or  in  escaping  his  foes.     But 

when  a  discrimination  sense  has  reached  a  certain  pitch 

of  congenital  power,  the  mere  exercise  of  it  begins  to  be 

in  itself  a  pleasure,  and  almost  a  necessity  of  health. 

The  infant  delights  in  mere  noise,  in  the  mere  exercise 

of  its  faculty  of  distinguishing  one  sound  from  another. 

So  it  is  with  shapes  and  colours  ;  the  mere  exercise  of 

the   sense   faculty  is    a  delight,  quite   apart   from    any 

question  of  safety  or  advantage  to  be  gained  by  skill. 

Absence  of  things  to  look  at   is   an   actual   privation. 
46 


Morality  and  Art  47 

Finally,  it  begins  to  be  perceived  that  certain  combina- 
tions of  colour  or  form  or  sound  are  more  pleasing  to 
the  sense  than  others.  When  this  point  is  reached,  art 
is  born. 

Two  conditions  must  exist  before  a  mode  of  training 
has  a  right  to  call  itself  art-training.  The  first  is  that 
it  shall  cultivate  the  power  of  combining  impressions 
received  as  separate.  Art-training  must,  it  is  true, 
cultivate  the  power  of  discrimination  also,  and  to  a  very 
high  degree ;  but  the  discrimination  must  ultimately 
serve  the  purpose  of  combination,  or  there  is  no  art. 
An  insect  might  feel  the  note  D  flat  beautiful,  because 
that  is  the  pitch  of  its  mate's  voice,  and,  when  the  scale 
is  played  on  a  violin,  may  discriminate  very  keenly 
between  D  flat,  the  beautiful,  and  D  natural,  hideous  to 
its  instincts  because  sung  by  the  bird  which  devours  its 
tribe ;  but  this  is  not  art.  The  musician  also  dis- 
criminates between  D  natural  and  D  flat,  but  he  knows 
nothing  of  one  of  these  being  preferable  to  another  ;  his 
business  with  each  of  them,  in  his  capacity  of  sound- 
artist,  is  to  judge  under  what  conditions  they  shall  be 
combined  (either  in  a  chord  or  in  sequence)  with  each 
other  and  with  other  notes.  The  tester,  who  detects  the 
presence  of  foul  gas  in  a  tin  of  preserved  meat  by  a 
slight  tap  on  the  cover,  must  have  his  power  of  auditory 
distinction  cultivated  to  a  high  pitch,  but  he  selects  the 
one  sound  as  "  good  "  and  the  other  as  "  evil " ;  in  this 
there  is  no  attempt  at  combination,  therefore  no  art. 

The  second  condition  which  characterises  art-training 
proper  is  that  each  combination  shall  be  made  in  obedi- 
ence to  the  dictates  of  the  art-instinct  itself,  unwarped 
by  any  other  considerations.     This  point  needs  a  little 


4  8    The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

clearing  up.  The  amount  and  kind  of  elements  among 
which  combinations  are  to  be  effected  may  be  limited  to 
any  degree,  by  all  sorts  of  considerations,  beforehand  ; 
but,  the  limits  once  decided  on,  the  act  of  choice,  within 
those  limits,  must  be  pure  and  undisturbed,  or  it  is  not 
an  act  of  art.  The  workman  who  goes  with  fivepence 
to  a  village  shop  where  there  are  two  tins  of  Aspinall's 
enamel,  and  who  chooses  the  green  rather  than  the  blue 
to  make  a  pattern  on  his  red  door,  because  he  likes  it 
better,  does  an  act  of  art ;  within  narrow  restrictions, 
but  still,  art.  Nay,  the  man  who,  having  no  money  to 
spare,  finds  a  half-empty  tin  of  enamel  thrown  away, 
and  brings  it  home,  and  decides  either  to  put  a  rim  of 
the  green  paint  on  his  door  because  "  it  do  zim  to  I  as  it 
'ud  look  purty,"  or  to  leave  the  door  plain  because 
"  when  I  did  zee  that  there  green  atween  the  door  and 
the  ivy,  I  didn't  zim  to  fancy  it,"  has,  in  either  case, 
done  an  act  of  art ;  he  has  selected,  among  his  limited 
stock  of  possibilities,  a  certain  combination  rather  than 
another,  because  the  one  suited  his  art-sense  (at  its 
present  level  of  culture)  better  than  the  other.  But  the 
person  who,  with  boundless  resources  at  command,  is 
swayed,  at  the  moment  of  choice,  by  any  other  con- 
sideration than  "  it  do  zim  to  I,"  is  not  doing  an  art-act. 
All  this  has  nothing  to  do  with  any  question  of  selfish- 
ness or  the  reverse.  The  man  may  be  ornamenting  the 
cottage  for  his  own  pleasure  only,  or  for  that  of  the  wife 
with  whom  he  hopes  to  enjoy  it,  or  as  a  parting  gift  to 
his  sister  before  he  leaves  home  never  to  return.  The 
point  is  this : — Whatever  be  his  motive  for  decorating, 
if  he  selects  his  decoration  as  the  actual  shades  strike  his 
eye  when  seen  in  combination,  he  is   exercising  his  art- 


Morality  and  Art  49 

faculty ;  whereas  no  choice  of  colour  is  an  exercise  of 
colour-art  if  it  be  swayed  by  any  other  considerations 
than  the  laws  of  the  eye  itself.  And  it  matters  little 
whether  the  motive  be:  "I'll  wear  a  green  ribbon 
because  green  is  the  patriotic  colour  just  now,"  or  "This 
combination  is  considered  correct  just  now,"  or  "  The 
Duchess  of  Somewhere  wore  this  at  the  last  Court  ball  "  ; 
in  either  case  some  consideration  other  than  the  pleasure 
of  the  chooser's  eye  determines  the  choice  ;  and  therefore 
there  is  (so  far  as  the  eye  is  concerned)  no  art.  Art- 
faculty  exerts  itself  in  subjection  to  no  laws  except 
those  of  the  choosing  organ,  whatever  that  may  be. 

The  organ  develops  first  as  a  mere  discriminating 
organ,  under  pressure  of  the  action  of  other  organisms. 
But  when  fully  established  as  a  discriminating  organ, 
it  then  sets  up  its  own  code  of  laws.  When  an  organ 
selects  and  combines  in  obedience  to  its  own  laws  only, 
we  call  its  action  "  art."  When  such  writers  as  Ruskin 
and  Hobson  make  their  passionate  claim  for  some 
opportunity  for  art-culture  on  behalf  of  the  masses,  what 
they  primarily  mean  is  that  there  should  be  no  class  of 
the  community  living  under  such  conditions  that  each 
organ  and  faculty  is  exerted  only  according  to  laws 
belonging  to  some  other  department  of  life;  there 
should  come  into  the  life  of  every  citizen  opportunities  for 
exercising  his  faculties,  each  according  to  its  own  laws. 

The  horror  of  association  felt  by  a  weak  tribe  for  the 
war-paint  or  war-cry  of  a  fiercer  neighbour  tribe,  the 
disgusted  contempt  of  a  dominant  caste  for  the  colour 
of  the  pariah's  badge — these  are  factors  in  evoking  the 
keen  discrimination  which  is  the  first  essential  of  art- 
culture.     But  when  once  the  artist  has  come,  we  must 

4 


so   The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

expect  from  him  no  deference  to  prejudices  of  associ- 
ation ;  he  has  one  function  only  in  connection  with  the 
hateful  tint  or  note,  viz.,  to  combine  it  with  other  tints 
or  notes  in  such  a  manner  as  to  cause  men  to  realise 
that  it  adds  to  the  beauty  of  the  whole.  This  point  we 
must  remember  if  we  are  to  attach  any  adequate  mean- 
ing to  the  expression  "  Art  of  Thinking."  The  Art  of 
Thinking  is  that  mode  of  dealing  with  thoughts  which 
is  related  to  our  mental  faculties  of  discrimination  as 
the  form  and  colour  arts  are  to  our  powers  of  form  and 
colour  discrimination,  as  the  art  of  musical  composition 
is  to  the  faculty  of  distinguishing  between  different 
notes.  It  is  the  art  of  combining  thoughts,  not  in  sub- 
servience to  any  external  need  or  law,  but  in  accordance 
with  the  laws  of  the  Thinking-organ  itself 

The  Science  which  underlies  the  Art  of  Thought-com- 
bination is  called  Mathematics.  Mathematics  stands 
related  to  the  Art  of  Thinking  somewhat  as  the  science 
of  harmony  and  counterpoint  does  to  the  art  of  music. 

It  so  happens  that  the  laws  of  thought-combination 
were  first  discovered  when  men  were  trying  to  think 
truly  about  number,  quantity,  and  size ;  and  for  that 
reason  a  great  many  persons  assert  that  mathematics  is 
the  science  of  number,  size,  and  quantity.  This  assertion 
is  pure  nonsense. 

Persons  who  have  outgrown  the  delusion  about 
mathematics  being  the  science  of  number  and  size,  speak 
of  it  as  a  sort  of  "Logic."  This  is  a  little  nearer  the 
mark,  but  only  a  little.  Logic  can  become  mathematical, 
and,  as  Gratry  said,  when  it  does  so  it  acquires  wings, 
whereas  before  it  had  only  feet. 

It  seems  to  me  a  pity  that  children  should,  in  most 


Morality  and  Art  5  ^ 

cases,  know  nothing  of  mathematics  except  as  related 
to  ideas  of  number  and  size.  Any  parents  who  may 
wish  to  do  so  can  make,  of  such  arithmetic,  algebra,  and 
geometry  as  are  taught  in  schools,  a  genuine  introduction 
to  the  Art  of  Thinking.  This  can  be  done  without  adding 
to  the  child's  intellectual  labour,  by  occasional  little  half- 
jesting  remarks  at  home.^ 

We  cannot  evolve  any  art  of  combinations,  harmonies, 
and  sequences,  till  we  are  provided  with  a  multiform, 
strong,  and  accurate  sense  of  discrimination  between  the 
elements  to  be  combined.  Nature's  way  of  providing 
us  with  the  necessary  discrimination  is  first  to  make 
personal  or  tribal  safety  depend  on  that  discrimination, 
on  seeking  one  thing  and  avoiding  its  opposite ;  next, 
to  set  up  an  hereditary  instinct  to  feel  as  "  good  "  that 
which  our  ancestors  found  by  experience  to  be  good,  and 
as  "  evil "  what  experience  taught  them  to  avoid.  The 
instinct  to  avoid  certain  things  because  they  are  "  evil " 
is  the  necessary  preliminary  to  any  development  of  art. 

But  the  Art-Creator,  when  he  appears  on  the  scene, 
begins  by  sweeping  the  verdicts  of  experience  and  of 
instinct  into  the  limbo  of  forgotten  superstitions,  not 
because  art  is  lawless,  but  because  it  has  laws  of  its  own, 
and  tolerates  no  other  legislator.  Till  it  may  be  master 
of  the  situation,  it  (art)  stays  away. 

Now  we  are  going  to  fit  our  House  of  Thought  with 
a  new  implement  of  orderliness. 

The  leaders  of  a  tribe  have  been  trying  their  consci- 
entious best,  for  countless  generations,  to  foster  in  the 
young  a  habit,  an   instinct,  when   they  hear  a  certain 

'  My  text-book,  Philosophy  and  Fun  of  Algebra,  contains  a 
suggestion  of  such  domestic  jokes. 


52    The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

note,  to  scamper  instantly  towards  it  because  it  is  the 
cry  of  some  animal  which  ought  to  be  caught  for  food, 
and,  when  they  hear  a  certain  other  note,  to  scuttle 
away  and  hide,  because  it  is  the  cry  of  some  beast  of 
pre)''  too  powerful  for  them  to  cope  with. 

A  Jubal  appears  among  the  tribe,  an  inventor  of 
music  ;  he  has  got  hold  of  some  sort  of  gut  or  fibre 
which  will  twang  a  variety  of  notes.  The  children  stand 
round  him,  inquisitive,  wondering,  half-frightened  yet 
spell-bound.  What  is  he  doing?  Demoralising  them. 
Blurring  the  lines  of  distinction  between  "  good  and  evil." 
Destroying,  bringing  to  naught,  the  work  of  ages. 

Can  you  conceive  the  wrath  of  the  Leaders  ? 

Yet  thus,  and  thus  alone,  can  any  art  be  born  into 
the  world  ;  at  that  cost,  and  no  lesser  one,  does  art  exist. 

And  observe  that  the  precursor  of  music  is  not  even 
making  music  ;  he  is  only  making  senseless  noise.  He 
is  sweeping  away  the  laws  of  tribal  ethics;  and  he  is 
not  keeping  even  those  of  counterpoint,  for  they  are 
not  yet  evolved. 

Between  the  Law-Abiders  and  the  Art-Creator  there 
must  always  come  "  The  Law-Breaker."  If  the  note  of 
the  awful  beast  of  prey  is  ever  beautiful,  it  is  so,  even  on 
art's  own  showing,  only  when  put  in  certain  specifically 
right  relations  to  other  sounds  ;  and  the  criminal  lunatic 
Jubal  is  not  putting  it  in  right  relations  at  all ;  he  is 
no  good  anyway  ;  Anathema ;  away  with  him  ;  crucify 
him  ! 

And  indeed,  though  art  cannot  be  born  unless  some- 
one has  courage  to  break  the  laws  of  tribal  self-pre- 
servation, neither  can  music  be  born  in  a  chaotic 
confusion   of  disorderly   noises.         It    will    not   do   for 


Morality  and  Art  53 

everyone  to  twang  guts  and  ignore  tribal  duty.  The 
Law-breaker,  therefore,  must  not  demoralise  the  tribe  ; 
until  at  least  he  knows  how  to  teach  them  a  higher 
Law.  He  must  be  isolated  from  his  kind ;  he  will  be 
during  his  earth -life  The  Misunderstood  One;  the 
Eternal  Scape-goat,  who  bears  the  sins  of  the  world ; 
"outside  the  camp,  though  inside  the  veil."  If  he  is 
the  true  destined  Revealer  he  will  not  think  the  price 
too  high  to  pay  for  this  privilege.  If  he  is  not  that, 
then  isolation  is  the  best  thing  for  him  ;  it  gives  him 
the  opportunity  to  meditate  on  the  folly  of  meddling 
in  dangerous  experiments  without  sufficient  warrant 
or  preparation. 

Latent  heat  and  potential  light  are  stored  up  during 
the  composition  of  a  body  ;  sensible  heat  and  visible 
light  are  given  off  during  decomposition. 

True  economy  consists  in  not  disturbing  the  storage, 
except  under  conditions  which  facilitate  the  force  given 
off  in  decomposition  passing  into  the  composition  of 
a  body  of  higher  evolution. 

But  there  are  people  who  think  that  it  is  always  a 
good  thing  to  set  light  free,  regardless  of  the  question 
whether  anything  of  higher  evolution  than  the  candle 
will  profit  by  it ;  and  there  are  people  who  think  that 
it  is  always  economical  to  abstain  from  lighting  a  candle, 
no  matter  who,  and  what,  needs  the  light. 

The  Bases  of  Morality  for  the  Law-Breaker 

The  game  of  skittles  is  more  interesting  when  played 
with  a  trained  hand  and  eye  than  when  played  at 
random. 


54   The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

If  life  is  to  be  all  beer  and  skittles  it  is  advisable 
not  to  put  the  beer-bottles  among  the  skittles,  at  least 
until  after  we  have  drunk  the  beer. 

Only  a  cockney  cares  for  shooting  barn-door  fowls. 

Only  a  cad  poaches  on  his  neighbour's  preserves  as 
long  as  he  has  woods  of  his  own.  (The  excuse  for 
the  village  poacher  is  that  society  has  robbed  him  of 
his  woods.) 

The  true  gentleman  likes  shooting  dangerous  wild 
beasts  better  than  shooting  pheasants,  even  if  they  are 
his  own. 

Ethics  is  a  fence  put  up  to  protect  our  neighbour's 
barnyard. 


CHAPTER  VII 

SEX    INSTINCTS 

From  the  dawn  of  organic  life  on  this  planet  up  to  the 
appearance  of  civilised  man,  every  race  of  organisms  was 
forced  to  provide  food  for  creatures  not  of  the  same  race. 
Each  race  was  therefore  bound,  under  penalty  of  extinc- 
tion, to  propagate  in  great  excess  of  the  amount  required 
to  maintain  its  own  numbers. 

Pause  for  a  moment  and  think.  For  countless  ages, 
the  whole  evolution  of  everything  depended  upon  every- 
body putting  into  the  world  a  thousand  times  as  many 
fertilised  eggs  as  ever  were  intended  to  come  to  maturity. 
Everyone's  duty  was  to  give  to  some  other  race,  as  food, 
a  thousand  eggs  or  babies  for  one  that  was  to  be  reared. 
Slowly,  very  slowly,  there  has  crept  in  an  idea,  im- 
perfectly carried  out  even  yet,  of  protecting  the  young, 
of  not  allowing  other  races  to  feed  on  one's  babies. 
Man  has  cleared  off,  at  least  from  all  the  main  centres 
of  civilisation,  all  of  the  larger  races  (lions,  tigers,  wolves, 
etc.)  which  show  any  desire  to  eat  the  flesh  of  human 
babies ;  but  we  have  not  even  yet  accomplished  the 
extinction  of  the  parasites  and  microbes  who  devour 
human  flesh.  So  that  even  still  over-propagation 
is  to  some  slight  extent  the  duty  of  some  people. 
That  is  to  say,  propagation  somewhat  in  excess 
55 


5  6    The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

of  what  would  be  normal  if  everyone  lived  to  die  of 
old  age. 

For  all  our  ancestors,  from  the  first  organic  creature 
up  to  a  few  generations  ago,  an  amount  of  propagating 
activity  which  would  necessarily  be  highly  inconvenient 
at  the  present  time  was  a  solemn  duty.  I  am  using  the 
words  "solemn"  and  "duty"  advisedly.  Duty  is  that 
which  is  due,  and  everything  is  solemn  which  tends 
towards  the  organising  of  a  higher  organism.  It  does 
not  follow  that  the  individual  felt  solemn  or  was  conscious 
of  his  duties.  For  all  practical  and  psychological 
purposes  an  enormous  amount  of  over-propagation  was 
a  solemn  duty  to  our  ancestors.  It  is  so  to  rabbits  and 
wild  birds  still.  For  us  it  is  no  longer  a  duty.  But  the 
impulse  remains  in  the  shape  of  a  fleshly  lust.  What 
are  we  going  to  do  with  it  ? 

The  first  thing  to  do  with  it  is  to  treat  it  always  in 
thought  and  word  with  the  utmost  reverence  which  it 
is  in  our  nature  to  feel  for  anything. 

What  have  we  done  with  it  ? 

We  have  made  of  it  the  subject  of  irreverent  jesting 
and  of  far  more  irreverent  moralising. 

Can  one  conceive  of  anything  more  hideously  and 
grotesquely  irreverent  than  the  attitude  of  a  priest  who 
celebrates  the  Eucharist  after  prefacing  it  by  a  sermon 
in  which  he  denounces,  as  the  inspiration  of  the  devil, 
that  very  condition  in  man  to  which,  as  it  exists  in  the 
wheat  and  vine  plants,  he  owes  the  possibility  of  having 
his  bread  and  wine  to  consecrate  ? 

Normal  sex-action  is  fertile  contact  between  suitably 
differentiated  polars.  This  may  take  place  either  in  the 
generative  organs  or  in  the  brain. 


Sex  Instincts  57 

When  we  sing  the  invocation  "Veni,  Creator,"  we 
invite  Adonai  to  make  fertile  this  contact  of  polars. 
When  this  happens  in  the  organs  of  generation  we  call 
it  fecundation  ;  when  it  happens  in  the  brain  we  call  it 
inspiration  (artistic,  poetic,  prophetic,  or  spiritual 
inspiration,  as  the  case  may  be). 

The  problem  with  which  Humanity  is  confronted  is 
that  of  diverting  the  atavistic  excess  of  desire  for  con- 
tact of  polars  from  the  physically  fertilisable  organs  to 
that  spiritually  fertilisable  organ  which  we  call  "  brain," 
and  so  to  increase  the  genius  of  the  race  while  keeping 
its  numbers  down  to  manageable  proportions.  The 
difficulty  of  the  problem  has  been  enormously  complicated 
by  the  action  of  moralists. 

Nowhere  is  the  action  of  moralists  in  increasing 
immorality  so  clearly  to  be  seen  as  in  connection  with 
the  sex  impulse ;  and  it  is  therefore  in  this  chapter  that 
I  propose  to  describe  it. 

Probably  no  human  being,  possibly  no  mammal  or 
bird,  has  ever  experienced  sex-action  for  the  first  time 
without  at  least  a  momentary  impression  of  the  Presence 
of  something  so  sacred  that  all  else  which  is  held  sacred 
Is  to  this  new  impression  as  shadow  is  to  substance.  If 
this  momentary  Revelation  of  Sacredness  comes  to  a 
virgin  mind  cumbered  with  no  previous  ideas,  it  runs 
smoothly  along  the  course  of  its  normal  evolution  to  its 
normal  goal : — a  quickening  of  the  power  of  sympathy 
and  a  development  of  the  power  of  altruism.  The 
individual  is  then  free  to  decide  whether,  when,  and 
under  what  conditions,  he  shall  repeat  the  act,  according 
to  his  circumstances  and  to  such  knowledge  as  he 
possesses,    guided    by   the    additional    sympathy    and 


5  8    The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

altruism  left  behind  by  the  act  itself.  He  will  take  his 
own  liking  only  as  one  of  many  factors  which  have  to  be 
taken  into  account  in  deciding  his  course  of  action: — 
as  we  all  do  in  the  case  of  a  liking  for  peaches,  or  a 
desire  to  enjoy  music  or  pictures. 

But  if  the  sudden  sense  of  sacredness  comes  into  con- 
flict with  some  preconceived  idea  of  degradation,  evil,  or 
triviality,  in  the  sexual  act,  the  effect  is  somewhat  like 
that  of  a  collision  between  two  trains  running  in  opposite 
directions.  Wreckage  of  something  or  other  is  certain 
to  occur ;  and  the  answer  to  the  question  what  shall 
escape  from  that  wreckage  is  a  matter  of  what  we  call 
"  accident,"  by  which  we  mean  that  it  depends  on  causes 
over  which  we  have  no  control. 

Consciously  or  unconsciously,  the  man  is  confronted 
with  the  questions  : — "If  that  was  not  sacred,  then  what 
else  can  be  so?  If  that  Presence  was  the  devil,  then 
what  is  the  use  of  God  ?  "  Even  if  his  conscious  thought 
does  not  ask  those  questions,  his  flesh  and  blood  and 
marrow  and  unconscious  mind  ask  them,  and  insist  on 
their  being  answered. 

The  following  are  some  ot  the  answers  given  in  the 
wreck  of  body  and  mind  : — 

I.  God  is  in  Nature,  and  whatever  is  natural  is  holy. 
The  individual  seeks  the  opposite  sex  as  freely  as  a  wild 
animal  does;  forgetting  that  the  proceedings  of  wild 
animals  are  consonant  to  the  true  order  of  Nature  only 
where  there  is  abundant  room  for  healthy  children  to 
roam  about  in  and  plenty  of  carnivorous  birds  and 
beasts  to  rid  society  of  sickly  and  superfluous  ones.  The 
original  nerve-wreckage  is  helped  into  intellectual  con- 
fusion by  the  double  sense  of  the  word  "  natural  "  ;  it  is 


Sex  Instincts  59 

used  sometimes  as  meaning  that  which  we  feel  impelled 
to  do  because  the  doing  of  it  was,  for  our  ancestors,  con- 
sonant to  the  true  order  of  evolution  at  their  level  of 
progress,  sometimes  as  meaning  consonant  to  the  true 
order  of  evolution  for  our  stage  of  progress.  People 
mistakenly  suppose  that  what  is  natural  in  the  former 
sense  is  necessarily  so  in  the  latter. 

2.  Some  persons  "  return  to  nature  "  in  a  different  way 
from  that  just  described.  They  deliberately  turn  their 
backs  on  temptation,  live  in  the  country  and  almost 
in  isolation  ;  tire  themselves  with  manual  labour ;  adopt 
a  poor  diet;  and  avoid  the  society  of  the  opposite  sex, 
and  everything  which  can  stimulate  receptivity  to  Adonai, 
the  fertiliser  at  either  pole  of  their  nerve-battery.  They 
think  that  they  "  find  God  in  Nature,"  because  they  use 
their  senses  on  observing  His  work  outside  of  themselves. 
They  watch  the  effect  of  fertilisation  on  non-human 
creatures,  as  a  substitute  for  becoming  fertile  themselves. 

3.  Some  come  to  the  conclusion  that  there  is  neither 
God  nor  devil ;  nor  anything  but  illusion.  They 
cynically  decide  to  make  a  constant  amusement  of  the 
sensations  which  indicate  the  touch  of  that  Adonai- 
Adonis,  whom  all  normal  instinct  hails  as  God,  but 
whom  moralists  proclaim  to  be  the  devil. 

4.  Sometimes  the  bewildered  conscience  fluctuates 
backwards  and  forwards,  alternately  yielding  to  the 
overwhelming  inspiration  of  the  "  Adona'i,"  and  then 
calling  Him  "devil"  in  a  fit  of"  repentance." 

5.  Sometimes  the  individual  gives  up  the  attempt  to 
find  his  way  himself  amid  the  illogical  tangle,  and  hands 
over  the  business  of  guiding  him  to  some  priest,  pastor, 
moralist,  or   "Salvationist,"   not   unfrequently  the   very 


6o    The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

same  who  originally  did  the  mischief.  This,  of  course, 
is  the  consummation  most  desired  by  the  moralising 
gentry,  who  take  occasion  to  magnify  their  office. 

6.  Sometimes  the  very  physical  nervous  structure 
of  the  man,  or  of  his  posterity,  is  wrecked,  and  sets 
up  for  itself  a  variety  of  anomalous  sensations,  desires, 
and  lusts,  such  as  no  wild  beast  could  conceive  the 
nature  of  Whereupon  moralists  take  the  opportunity 
to  point  a  moral  about  the  fallen  and  corrupt  nature 
of  man.  Now,  whoever  else  may  have  the  right  to 
indulge  in  lamentations  about  the  fallen  and  corrupt 
nature  of  a  wrecked  railway  train,  it  is  evident  that 
those  who  put  in  its  way  the  obstacle  which  caused 
the  disaster  can  have  no  such  right.  Moralists  and 
teachers  of  religion  have  not  sufficiently  taken  to  heart 
the  great  truth  that  whatever  organ  of  the  body  is 
thought  of  while  the  religious  emotions  are  active 
tends  to  become  turgid  and  excitable.  They  seize 
upon  children  at  the  critical  age,  and  preach  sexual 
abstinence  as  a  religions  duty ;  with  the  inevitable 
consequence  of  making  it,  in  many  cases,  an  over- 
whelmingly difficult  one.  They  should  leave  that 
topic  entirely  in  the  hands  of  unemotional  medical 
advisers,  and  reserve  religious  emotion — if  they  must 
stir  it  at  all — as  a  stimulus  for  the  faculties  which  it  is 
desirable  to  stimulate  into  action.^     No  such  thing  as 

^  The  above  applies  to  religious  emotions,  such  as  are  roused  by 
thinking  about  the  Passion  and  Crucifixion  of  Christ,  the  sorrows 
of  the  Madonna,  and  the  ecstatic  utterances  of  saints.  All  such 
topics  may  seem  to  give  self-control  for  a  time,  but  are  prone  to 
leave  dangerous  reactions  unless  the  force  generated  is  immediately 
carried  off  in  some  active  work.  They  are  therefore  most  safely 
employed  as  stimulus  to  beneficence  and  the  doing  of  duties.     The 


Sex  Instincts  6 1 

a  sound  system  of  education  can  be  evolved  till  it  is 
accepted  that  receptivity  of  Adonai'  the  Fertiliser  is 
the  inalienable  birthright  of  all  creatures ;  it  is  the 
glory  and  privilege  of  Man  to  direct,  at  any  given 
time,  at  which  pole  of  his  nerve-battery  Adonai  shall 
descend. 

Ants  and  bees  have  contrived  a  scheme  of  morality 
in  which  large  numbers  of  the  community  are  kept 
physically  infertile,  apparently  without  evolving  any 
compensating  receptivity  for  fresh  intellectual  inspira- 
tion. All  the  industry,  the  altruism,  and  the  magnificent 
organisation  of  these  highly  civilised  peoples  have  not 
prevented  arrestation  of  development  and  of  progress. 
Nor  do  they  succeed  in  preventing  us — barbarians  as 
we  are  compared  with  them — from  appropriating  to 
our  own  use  the  results  of  the  bees'  toil,  robbing  ant 
nurseries  to  feed  our  tame  fish,  and  scalding  out  the 
ants  in  millions  whenever  we  find  them  inconvenient 
to  ourselves.  The  message  of  these  arrested  civilisa- 
tions to  ours  is : — Beware  of  irreverence  to  Adonai  the 
Fertiliser ;  for  He  will  not  let  them  pass  guiltless  who 
slight  Him  or  blaspheme  His  Holy  Name. 

Now,  young  mother,  I  know  what  you  want  to  ask. 
What  are  you  to  say  to  your  boy  "  before  he  goes  to 
school  "  ?  It  is  not  my  business,  as  I  remarked  before, 
to  form  conclusions  for  you,  or  to  dictate  what  you 
shall  say  or  do ;  I  am  trying  to  help  you  to  learn  the 
Art  of  Thinking  for  yourself  There  are  two  or  three 
obvious  truths  which  it  would  be  well  to  get  soaked 
into  your  own  mind  before  the  child  is  old  enough  to 

same  caution  does  not  apply  to  calm  religio-philosophical  absorption 
in  the  thought  of  the  Infinite  Unseen. 


62    The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

talk,  and  two  or  three  mental  habits  which  he  had 
better  form  before  he  goes  out  into  the  world  of  school. 

For  yourself,  take  notice  that  the  two  more  important 
faculties,  that  of  thought  and  that  of  generation,  are 
slowly  passing  through  the  same  process  of  evolution 
which  the  faculties  of  sight  and  hearing  have  already 
passed  through.  Having  been  evolved,  under  pressure 
of  the  struggle  for  life,  as  implements  of  racial  pre- 
servation, they  are  being  gradually  transformed  into 
instruments  of  creative  art  and  channels  of  spiritual 
inspiration.  Read  over  again  the  last  chapter  and 
apply  it  to  the  art  of  generating  progeny.  Learn 
what  you  can  about  Nature's  wide  variety  in  the 
matter  of  marriage  customs.^  This  will  help  you  to 
clear  your  mind  of  insular  and  narrow  ideas. 

For  your  child,  accustom  him,  from  infancy,  to  realise 
consciously  the  sacredness  of  order  and  sequence. 
Bring  it  home  to  his  consciousness  that  people  are 
not  trusted  to  walk  down  stairs  till  they  have  shown 
that  they  can  walk  steadily  on  the  floor;  that  one  is 
not  trusted  to  handle  costly  and  delicate  objects  till 
one  knows  how  to  handle  common  ones  carefully ; 
that  one  is  not  allowed  to  experiment  with  dangerous 
explosives  or  poisons  till  one  has  shown  oneself  capable 
of  dealing  properly  with  the  more  harmless  kinds  of 
chemicals. 

Let  him  see  what  an  ugly,  miserable  thing  is  a  flower 
whose  protecting  sheath  has  been  torn  away  before  the 
proper  time. 

'  Grant  Allen's  Story  of  the  Plants  is  a  simple,  cheap,  useful 
little  book,  and  contains  a  large  quantity  of  information  on  the 
subject. 


Sex  Instincts  63 

Accustom  him  to  the  idea  that  Church  is  a  great 
Drama,  in  which  all  are  actors  and  nobody  a  mere 
audience;  and  that  the  silence,  solemnity,  and  orderliness 
enforced  there  are  rehearsals  intended  to  get  people  into 
the  right  habit  and  attitude  in  which  to  approach  the 
really  sacred  facts  of  Life. 

Then  "  before  he  goes  to  school "  tell  him  that  the 
organs  by  means  of  which  children  are  made  are  the 
most  delicate  and  the  most  sacred  things  with  which  we 
have  to  do;  that  he  may  ask  you  any  questions  he  likes 
about  them,  and  you  will  answer  him  if  you  can  ;  but 
that  till  he  is  quite  grown  up  he  must  not  experiment 
with  them  ;  and  had  better  not  listen  to  the  talk  of 
children  who  know  nothing  of  order  and  sequence. 

When  he  asks  questions,  answer  him  according  to  the 
best  of  your  own  judgment  at  the  time.  He  is  your 
child,  not  mine  ;  I  cannot  tell  exactly  what  ought  to 
be  said  to  him. 

If  you  are  under  the  delusion  that  you,  or  I,  or  any- 
one else  knows  now  what  opinions  the  best  and  purest 
people  will  be  holding,  or  what  line  of  action  they  will 
be  taking,  in  sex  matters,  in  twenty  years  from  now, 
pray  occupy  some  of  your  thinking-time  in  shaking 
yourself  free  from  it. 

But  if  anything  can  be  said  to  be  clear  and  certain 
on  the  sex-question,  it  is  that  a  person  who  is  going  to 
try  extra-legal  experiments  should  not  entangle  with 
his  own  life  that  of  any  woman  who  would  not  have 
associated  herself  with  him  had  she  known  it,  and 
especially  he  should  not  have  children  by  such  a  woman. 
Therefore  give  your  child  the  habit  of  understanding 
that   a  promise  once  made  must  be    kept,  even    if  the 


64    The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

keeping  of  it  should  prove  more  inconvenient  than  at 
first  seemed  likely;  and  that  whoever  is  not  prepared 
to  keep  a  promise  at  all  costs,  should,  at  all  costs,  forego 
the  convenience  of  making  it. 

There  are  whispers  in  the  air  of  a  great  discovery  in 
America  about  sex-action,  which  seems  likely  to 
revolutionise  all  our  ideas  on  the  subject.  It  has  always 
been  known  to  occultists  that  each  form  of  worship  of 
the  concrete,  from  the  purest  Christian  ecstasy  to  the 
most  degraded  fetish-worships,  has  its  exact  analogue 
in  some  form  of  sex-action,  passion,  or  emotion.  But 
modern  occultists  knew  of  no  sex-analogue  to  the  calm, 
unemotional,  passionless  absorption  of  soul  and  mind  in 
adoration  of  The  Non-conceivable  Unity,  which  is  the 
secret  of  the  force  of  Israel.  This  missing  link  has  now 
been  recovered  :  the  lost  secret,  apparently,  of  the  higher 
and  purer  Mysteries  of  Egypt  and  the  East.  No  one 
can  form  any  conception  of  how  this  discovery  may 
influence  our  whole  conceptions  of  sex  morality.  The 
best  that  any  mother  can  do  now  is  to  pray  and  strive 
that  her  child  may  grow  up  worthy  to  take  a  manly 
part  in  the  revolution  which  is  obviously  preparing. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

PROTECTIVE   INSTINCTS 

It  must  by  this  time  be  evident  that  there  are  many  of 
us  for  whom  moralists  and  teachers  of  religion  can  do 
little  that  is  really  valuable  to  help  us  to  forge  passion 
into  power.  The  most  they  can  do  or  are  willing  to  do 
for  those  I  am  addressing  is  to  provide  crutches  for 
individuals  whose  legs  they  have  broken. 

And  what  about  our  advisers  on  the  medical  side? 

The  higher  the  grade  of  evolution  of  any  creature,  the 
greater  the  variety  of  dangers  to  which  it  is  exposed. 
But  also  the  greater  the  variety  of  its  self-protecting 
instincts.  Genius  is  exposed  to  many  dangers  from 
which  the  commonplace  are  free,  but  develops,  when 
left  to  itself,  instincts  of  self-protection  which  the  common- 
place neither  possess  nor  need.  Now  almost  every 
instinct  developed  by  genius,  for  its  own  moral  pro- 
tection, is  registered  in  medical  books  as  a  symptom  of 
insanity.  Consequently  parents  and  teachers  discourage 
young  genius  from  guarding  itself  from  deteriorating 
influences  under  the  impression  that  the  self-protecting 
precautions  "  look  crazy."  As  James  Hinton  said,  the 
reason  the  world  is  not  saved  is  that  the  faculties  which 
could  save  it  are  trampled,  by  the  insincerity  of  our 
systems  of  education,  into  mad-houses,  or  gaol-s,  or  early 
65  5 


66    The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

graves,  or  worse.  The  insincerity  is  for  the  most  part 
not  conscious  or  voluntary  on  the  part  of  teachers :  it  is 
mainly  due  to  the  fact  that  they  assume  it  to  be  their 
duty  to  trample  down  and  exterminate  precisely  those 
instincts  which  ought  to  be  most  carefully  cultivated. 
Muddle  is  made,  not  so  much  by  what  we  say,  or  what 
we  do,  or  what  we  consciously  think,  as  by  what  we  take 
for  granted.  Teachers  take  for  granted  that  they  ought 
to  eliminate  everything  which  it  pleases  the  medical 
profession  to  catalogue  under  the  heading  : — "  Symptoms 
of  insanity."  Things  will  begin  to  clear  up  when  it  is 
recognised  that  many  kinds  of  insanity  are  symptoyns  of 
the  mistaken  confidence  of  parents  and  teachers  in  the 
wisdom  of  the  medical  profession.  Things  are  beginning 
to  mend,  however,  since  the  admission  of  women  to  that 
profession  ;  women  doctors  started  with  a  freer  hand  ; 
they  do  not  feel  bound  by  the  conventions  of  mediaeval 
nonsense  which  have  so  long  satisfied,  and  which  now 
hamper,  their  brothers  of  the  craft.  But  they  can  do 
little  to  help  us  unless  we  have  courage  to  help  ourselves 
and  them.  It  is  for  us,  the  patients,  "  the  dreamers,  the 
derided,  the  mad,  blind  men  who  see','  to  take  the  matter 
into  our  own  hands  and  decide  that  our  instincts  shall 
not  be  trampled  into  the  mud  by  any  theories  of  either 
doctors  or  priests. 

When  I  was  Librarian  at  Queen's  College,  two  girls, 
devoted  friends  and  constant  companions,  were  reckoned 
by  the  authorities  as  among  the  best  moral  influences 
of  the  place.  They  have  turned  out  remarkable  women, 
gifted  with  high  and  pure  moral  instincts.  When  they 
were  aged  respectively  sixteen  and  seventeen,  they  con- 
sulted  me  in  a  difficulty.     They  had  discovered    that 


Protective  Instincts  67 

when  they  were  together  their  conversation  fell  to  a 
lower  moral  level  than  either  would  have  carried  on  with 
anyone  else.  They  had  resolved  to  take  themselves  in 
hand  and  not  to  indulge  any  more  in  the  foolish  gossip 
of  which  they  were  ashamed.  But,  finding  themselves 
relapsing  into  it,  they  had  determined  not  to  talk  to 
each  other  for  the  future  except  on  necessary  college 
business.  So  much  they  had  settled  by  the  light  of  their 
own  instincts  of  purity,  without  the  aid  of  any  human 
advice.  They  now  wanted  me  to  advise  them  how  to 
prevent  it  getting  about  college  that  they  had  quarrelled. 
In  this  particular  case  I  was  able  to  afford  the  necessary 
shelter  to  the  dear  children  ;  I  invited  them  to  read  with 
me  occasionally  in  my  private  apartment,  and  advised 
them  to  come  up  the  main  stairway  on  those  occasions, 
together,  in  full  view  of  other  pupils. 

But  this  was  an  evasion  of  the  real  difficulty,  accident- 
ally available  in  one  particular  case ;  not  an  actual 
moral  solution.  The  real  difficulty  consists  in  the  fact 
that  persons  possessing  delicate  instincts  of  moral  self- 
protection  cannot  obey  them,  even  in  matters  which 
concern  only  themselves  and  in  ways  which  impose 
sacrifice  only  on  themselves,  without  becoming  the 
subjects  of  prurient  curiosity  to  coarser  natures.  Parents 
and  teachers  too  often  discourage  the  sudden  suspen- 
sion of  a  friendship  on  the  ground  that  such  rupture  is 
"  freaky "  and  "  looks  queer."  The  cessation  of  inter- 
course is  therefore  postponed  till  real  damage  has  been 
done.  The  nerve-stamina  gives  way ;  the  moral  nature 
deteriorates.  Or  perhaps  the  outraged  instinct  asserts 
itself  in  some  violent  and  irrational  manner,  and  there 
ensues  a  "  quarrel "  which  appears  to  be  about  something 


68    The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

which  is  not  the  real  cause  of  irritation,  but  only  the 
excuse  for  the  instinct  to  assert  itself.  It  is  driven  to 
seek  the  excuse  of  a  quarrel,  because  to  avoid  old 
friends  without  any  such  objective  reason  is  held  to  be 
"  a  symptom  of  insanity." 

In  a  lunatic  asylum  where  I  studied,  I  met  a  lady 
who  called  herself  Frances  Obrenovitch.  Her  simple 
courage  and  power  of  moral  logic  have  lighted  up  for 
me  the  whole  inferno  of  insanity  with  a  radiance  like 
the  smile  of  the  Sun-god.  But  for  the  present  we  are 
talking  of  protective  instincts,  and  what  Frances  showed 
me  on  that  subject,  Frances  took  it  into  her  head  that 
I  could,  and  ought  to,  make  a  career  for  myself  in 
literature  ;  and  sometimes  lectured  me  on  my  lack  of 
ambition,  which,  she  considered,  was  impeding  my  use- 
fulness. She  was,  morally,  far  saner  than  I  was ;  I 
always  listened  with  respect  to  her  gentle  sermonising. 
She  was  obviously  unfit  to  take  charge  of  her  money 
matters  ;  but  I  felt  a  great  desire  to  rescue  her  from 
incarceration,  and  proposed  to  try  to  get  the  Chancellor 
(she  was  a  ward  in  Chancery  and  had  no  near  relatives) 
to  give  the  charge  of  her  over  to  me.  Frances  took  a 
"  freak  "  or  "  mood,"  as  it  was  called  in  the  asylum,  and 
abruptly  cut  my  acquaintance.  The  patients  began  to 
comment  on  her  bad  treatment  of  me,  who  had  been, 
as  they  said,  so  kind  to  her.  The  head  attendant, 
seeing  me  watching  her  as  she  passed  me  in  the  corridors 
with  a  stony  stare,  kindly  tried  to  apologise  for  Frances. 
"  You  must  excuse  her ;  it  is  her  affliction,  poor  thing," 
etc.,  etc.  I  could  have  shaken  the  good  woman,  amiable 
as  was  her  intention.  On  the  last  day  of  my  visit,  I 
went  to  Frances's  recess  to  try  whether  she  would  relent 


Protective  Instincts  69 

at  parting  and  bid  me  good-bye.  "  I  have  something 
to  say  to  you,"  she  began  in  a  hard,  high-pitched  voice. 
"  You  could  make  a  career  for  yourself  in  literature  if 
you  chose.  Go  and  do  it,  and  don't  waste  your  time 
over  lunatics.  That  is  my  advice  to  you  and  my  wish  ; 
but  about  that  I  can  only  advise.  But  what  I  have  to 
say  for  myself  is  this: — If  you  will  do  as  I  advise,  you 
may  come  and  see  me  sometimes,  and  I  will  be  proud 
of  your  friendship.  But  if  you  are  going  to  waste  your 
time  over  lunatics,  I  will  be  no  party  to  it ;  for  in  that 
case  I  will  never  speak  to  you  again." 

Of  course  I  promised  to  exert  myself  to  do  as  she 
wished ;  and  the  smile  with  which  she  rewarded  me  was 
enough  to  make  one  keep  any  promise. 

Her  freak — of  cutting  her  one  sane  friend,  her  one 
link  with  the  outer  world,  her  one  possibility  of  emanci- 
pation from  a  life-long  incarceration — was  due  to  an 
impulse  of  moral  self-protection ;  she  would  not  speak 
to  me  till  she  had  fought  out  the  battle  with  herself,  and 
conquered  the  temptation  to  save  herself  at  the  cost  of 
my  career. 

Only  once  again  did  she  take  a  "freak"  of  cutting 
me.  She  had  by  that  time  learned  to  trust  me,  and 
recovered  herself  sufficiently  to  come  to  an  explanation 
in  a  very  few  hours. 

There  is  a  peculiar  smile,  the  token  of  victory  over 
Unseen  Forces  of  Evil,  which  in  modern  Europe  is  seen 
chiefly  in  mad-houses.  I  am  very  sure  that  in  Palestine 
of  old  it  was  often  seen  in  "  Schools  of  the  Prophets," 
and,  in  the  time  of  religious  persecution,  in  the  dungeons 
of  the  Inquisition.  And  this  brings  me  to  a  critical 
question. 


70   The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

In  Asia  of  old,  children  of  a  certain  type,  children 
born  under  certain  peculiar  circumstances,  were  brought 
up  in  a  temple,  or  religious  school.  We  read  of  what 
such  children  said  : — e.g.,  the  infant  Samuel.  Hundreds 
of  children  say  similar  things  in  England  now,  say 
things  quite  as  original-sounding  and  quite  as  beautiful. 
Most  highly  neurotic  children  are  subject  to  thought- 
transference,  and  project  into  suggestive  and  often 
beautiful  concrete  forms  the  deepest  thoughts  of  those 
under  whose  influence  they  live.  The  question  we  have 
to  face  is  not,  "  How  came  children  of  old  to  say  wise 
and  beautiful  things  ?  "  but  "  How  comes  it  that  children 
who  said  them  grew  up  into  wise  statesmen  or  holy 
Prophets  ;  while  similar  children  now  too  often  either 
make  fiasco  of  their  own  lives,  or  degenerate  into 
making  a  success  of  their  own  lives  by  wrecking  other 
people's  ?  " 

In  Schools  of  Prophets  children  were  taught  reverence 
for  their  own  instincts,  and  the  art  of  using  them  as 
moral  self-protection.  In  modern  European  schools 
one  of  the  chief  duties  of  the  teachers  is  to  ensure  that 
these  instincts  are  trampled  out  of  existence. 

The  general  reader  (should  he,  by  mistake,  glance  at 
these  pages)  will  probably  exclaim :  "  But  one  must 
make  one's  children  grow  up  like  other  people,  in  good 
form,  able  to  take  their  place  in  the  world,  and  to  pass 
without  comment  in  general  society."  But  then,  as  I 
said  at  starting,  I  am  writing,  not  for  the  general  reader 
but  for  those  who  seriously  desire  to  forge  passion  into 
power ;  to  convert  their  own  vague  sense  that  things 
are  not  quite  as  they  should  be,  into  effective  power  to 
have   them    altered.     In    the   same   country  where  the 


\ 


Protective  Instincts  71 

child  Samuel  grew  up  into  a  statesman,  the  Lord's 
people  were  forbidden  to  be  like  other  people.  They 
were  not  to  be  "  conformed  to  the  world,"  especially  not 
to  any  sort  of  religious  world  ;  each  Prophet  was  to  be 
guided  not  by  the  instincts  of  any  other  Prophet  but  by 
his  own  ;  by  the  Revelation  given  to  him  personally  from 
the  Unseen. 

Where  prophetic  instinct  is  generally  ignored,  it  seems 
almost  like  an  affectation  of  superiority  if  one  claims  to 
have  any.  Where  the  Lav/  is  that  each  man  should 
follow  the  guidance  of  his  own  instinct,  the  fact  of 
following  one's  own  implies  nothing  except  a  desire 
to  obey  the  Law.  Hence  the  severe  denunciations  of 
Prophets  against  those  who  follow  fashions,  even  in 
matters  indifferent.  They  are  helping  to  bind  them- 
selves and  others  in  inextricable  bondage  to  immoral 
influences. 


CHAPTER  IX 

BALANCE  OF  THE  NERVOUS  SYSTEM 

If  you  can  procure  a  sheet  of  foolscap  paper,  lay  it 
open  before  you.  Write  at  the  top  of  the  left-hand  page 
a  big  C;  at  top  of  the  right-hand  page  a  big  D. 

Under  C  copy  out  the  following  table,  with  as  wide 
a  space  between  the  numbers  as  the  length  of  the  page 
will  allow  for  : — 

C 

1.  Physical  digestive  power;  power  to  get  force  from 

eating  visible  things, 

2.  The  Time-Sense. 

3.  Attention  to  the  Concrete. 

4.  Desire  to  enjoy. 

5.  Delight  in  acquiring. 

6.  Desire  to  real-ise  one's  own  Ideal. 

7.  Love  of  absorbing  other  organisms  into  oneself  or 

one's  own  Ideals. 

8.  Consciousness  of  one's  relation  to  persons  visibly 

present  (or  whom  one  often  sees,  or  constantly 
corresponds  with). 

9.  Power  of  external  observation  by  sight,  hearing, 

etc. 

10.  Analysis. 

72 


Balance  of  the  Nervous  System       73 

11.  Activity  of  outer  senses. 

12.  Power  to  impress  others  with  one's  own  thoughts, 

feelings,  etc. 

Under  D  write  out  this  other  table.  Set  each 
number  on  the  same  line  as  the  corresponding  number 
in  Table  C  : — 


1.  Power  to  draw  Force  direct  from  the  Unseen. 

2.  Love  of  thinking  of  the  Eternal. 

3.  Attention  to  the  Abstract. 

4.  Pleasure  in  thinking  of  things  enjoyed  by  others. 

5.  Impulse  to  give. 

6.  Joy  in  renunciation. 

7.  Pleasure  in  being  absorbed  in  other  organisms  or 

in  serving  the  Ideals  of  others. 

8.  Consciousness  of  one's  relation  to  the  dead,  or  the 

absent,  or  to  future  generations. 

9.  Power  of  visualising,  imagining  sounds,  etc. 

10.  Synthesis. 

11.  Activity  of  unconscious  mind. 

12.  Receptivity,   sensitiveness   to    the   thoughts   and 

feelings  of  others. 

Pin  the  paper  open  on  your  wall,  or  set  it  up  on  your 
bureau,  so  that  it  may  often  be  under  your  eyes. 
Learn  the  two  columns  by  heart. 

If  you  are  not  so  situated  as  to  be  able  to  adopt  this 
course,  learn  the  tables  by  heart  from  the  book  ;  but 
take  care  to  visualise  as  you  do  so.  That  is  to  say, 
have  in  your  mind's  eye,  all  the  time,  a  picture  of  the 
sheet  of  foolscap  as  above  described.     Get  your  imagina- 


74   The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

tion  into  a  condition  in  which  you  can,  at  any  moment, 
call  up  a  clear  picture  of  the  two  tables  with  the  corre- 
sponding items  written  opposite  each  other.  Make  sure 
that  this  is  accomplished  before  you  read  any  further. 

Now  think  of  Table  C  (or  rather,  that  which  it 
represents)  as  laid  in  one  pan  of  a  pair  of  scales,  and 
what  Table  D  represents  as  laid  in  the  other  pan.  Get 
this  picture  also  well  visualised. 

When  I  use  the  words  "  a  balanced  nervous  system," 
I  mean  one  in  which  the  two  pans  stand  level. 

This  is  no  dogma  imposed  by  authority.  If  you  can 
doubt  that  the  true  equipoise  of  a  nervous  system  consists 
in  balance  between  the  two  sides  of  our  table,  pray  do 
so.  Doubt  as  hard  as  you  can,  and  as  long  as  you  can ; 
any  doubt  that  you  may  feel  will  be  the  starting-point  of 
fresh  thought-lines,  and  enable  you  to  find  out  some 
truth  unknown  to  me. 

By  the  time  you  have  read  to  the  end  of  this  chapter, 
it  may  occur  to  you  that  you  could  draw  up  a  better 
table  of  nerve-equipoise  than  mine.  If  it  does,  get  a 
fresh  sheet  of  foolscap,  real  or  imaginary ;  write  out  on 
it  your  own  table ;  learn  that  by  heart,  visualising  as 
you  go ;  then  read  this  chapter  over  again,  substituting, 
as  you  go,  your  own  table  for  mine.  Your  own  mind, 
and  therefore  also  the  general  world-mind,  will  be  all 
the  richer  for  your  having  done  so. 

But  because  you  disagree  with  an  author,  or  doubt  his 
knowing  the  whole  of  his  subject,  that  is  no  reason  why 
you  should  not  try  to  understand  his  point  of  view,  and 
to  follow  his  reasoning  as  far  as  it  goes.  The  principle 
of  nerve-balance  is  the  same,  however  much  we  may 
differ  as  to  the  details  of  adjustment.     When  I  think  of 


Balance  of  the  Nervous  System      JS 

nerve-equipoise,  I  think  of  my  own  table;  if  you  can 
make  out  one  which  seems  to  you  more  satisfactory,  then, 
for  the  future,  think  of  the  subject  in  connection  with 
your  own  table. 

The  point  on  which  we  have  to  fix  attention  just  now 
is  this  : — In  what  is  called,  when  weak,  a  mediocre  person, 
and,  when  strong,  a  good  all-round  sort  of  man,  each 
number  of  one  table  is  fairly  balanced  against  the 
corresponding  number  in  the  other  table ;  whereas  all 
that  is  known  as  genius,  and  all  that  is  distinctive, 
picturesque,  and  striking  in  character,  depend  on  the 
preponderance  of  some  one  or  more  characteristics,  the 
unbalancement  of  the  mind  or  nervous  structure  at  one 
or  more  of  the  lines.  Now  the  readers  whom  I  am 
chiefly  addressing  have  little  belief  in  the  possibility  or 
desirability  of  turning  out  everybody  conformed  to  the 
same  well-regulated  pattern.  Still  less  do  we  ourselves 
at  heart  desire  to  be  conformed  to  any  general  pattern ; 
however,  in  moods  of  despondency,  we  may  lament  some 
consequences  of  our  ex-centricity.  We  know  that 
genius,  on  the  whole,  rules  the  world,  however  many 
persons  of  genius  may  be  crushed  under  the  foot  of  the 
multitude.  And  some  of  us  know,  besides,  that  when 
genius  does  consent  to  sell  its  birthright  for  a  mess  of 
pottage,  what  it  gets  in  return  for  the  treasure  it  has 
sacrificed  is  not  the  good,  wholesome  family  pea-soup 
which  is  so  satisfying  to  the  appetite  of  the  mediocre, 
but  a  vile  devil's-broth  flavoured  with  all  the  fumes 
which  emanate  from  the  pit  of  hell.  And  this  is 
only  Nature's  punishment  for  violating  her  laws.  For 
in  truth  abnormality  and  ex-centricity  are,  as  Charles 
Babbage  showed,  the  most  normal  things  in  the  world  ; 


7  6   The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

they  form  part  of  that  great  scheme  of  differentiation  by- 
means  of  which  division  of  labour  and  distinction  of 
function  are  carried  out. 

Therefore,  friends,  neither  mediocrity  nor  all-roundness 
is  in  our  programme.  We  have  the  passions  of  our 
kind ;  and  we  desire  not  to  sell  them,  but  to  forge 
them  into  power. 

How,  then,  can  we  prevent  the  ex-centricities  of  our 
minds  and  hearts  from  weakening  and  injuring  the 
nervous  structure  which  is,  for  the  present,  their  enforced 
dwelling-place  and  their  necessary  implement? 

"All-roundness"  of  character  and  attainment  depends 
on  balance  between  each  number  in  Table  C  and  the 
corresponding  number  in  Table  D.  The  health  of  a 
nervous  system  depends  upon  balance  between  Table  C 
as  a  whole  and  Table  D  as  a  whole. 

Get  that  idea  well  fixed  in  your  mind  before  we  go 
any  further  ;  and  remember  that,  for  our  present  purpose, 
it  matters  very  little  whether  you  are  thinking  of  my 
tables  or  of  any  similar  ones  which  you  may  have  con- 
structed for  yourself. 

The  health  of  the  nervous  system  depends  on  a 
balance  between  Table  C  as  a  whole  and  Table  D  as  a 
whole. 

The  forging  of  passion  into  power  depends  on  com- 
bining the  greatest  amount  that  is  practically  workable 
of  unbalancement  between  any  particular  pair  of  lines, 
with  equipoise  of  the  tables  as  a  whole ;  that  is  to  say, 
balancing  exaggeration  on  one  line  in  one  table  by 
an  equal  exaggeration  of  one  or  more  other  lines  in  the 
other  table. 

I  said  :  the  maximum  of  unbalancement  that  is  practi- 


Balance  of  the  Nervous  System      ']'] 

cally  workable.  There  are  certain  qualities  and  attain- 
ments the  total  absence  of  which  is  so  inconvenient,  so 
hampers  one  in  whatever  one  wants  to  do,  and  makes 
one  so  burdensome  to  other  people,  that  no  one  who  can 
possibly  help  it  should  grow  up  totally  devoid  of  them. 
No  one  who  can  help  it  should  grow  up  quite  unable  to 
read,  or  totally  devoid  of  the  sense  of  punctuality.  How 
far  differentiation  may  be  carried  in  the  future  none  of 
us  can  predict  as  yet.  At  the  present  stage  of  evolution 
all  human  beings  have  to  learn  to  do  certain  things  their 
aptitude  for  which  is  naturally  very  weak. 

But  learning  to  do  that  for  which  we  have  no  natural 
aptitude  puts  a  great  strain  on  the  nervous  energy. 
The  cost  in  effort  is  very  large.  Therefore  the  task  of 
exercising  weak  faculties,  of  learning  uncongenial  tasks, 
should  not  be  undertaken  when  the  supply  of  force  is 
very  low  if  this  can  be  avoided;  it  cannot  be  considered 
a  remedy  or  re-creation  or  mode  of  recuperation.  Before 
it  is  , entered  upon,  it  is  advisable  to  see  that  the 
mechanism  by  means  of  which  nerves  and  brain  are 
charged  with  force  is  in  good  working  order. 

I  have  said  working  order.  All  recuperation  of 
energy  is  effected  by  the  working  of  something.  When 
a  patient  is  ordered  to  be  idle  as  a  means  of  recupera- 
tion, it  is  in  order  to  leave  time  for  the  working  of  lungs, 
heart,  and  digestive  organs  to  pump  some  force  into  his 
flesh  out  of  the  air  and  food.  When  they  cease  to  work, 
the  relaxation  of  his  muscular  tissues  is  not  that  of 
recuperation  but  that  of  death. 

There  is  a  similar  pumping  action  by  which  nervous 
energy  is  brought  out  of  unseen  cosmic  sources  on  to 
the  nerves  and  brain.     We  need  to  get  it  into  effective 


78    The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

working  order  and  keep  it  working  steadily  if  we  are  to 
do  the  exhausting  business  of  exercising  faculties  which 
are  weak,  and  performing  tasks  which  are  uncongenial. 

Let  us  study  the  nerve-pump  a  little,  in  order  that  we 
may  understand  its  construction  before  we  begin  tinker- 
ing at  it  at  random. 

Its  efficacy  appears  to  depend,  like  that  of  every  sort 
of  pump  in  the  world,  whether  natural  or  artificial,  on 
an  alternation  of  contrary  motions.  The  alternation 
seems  to  be  between  Table  C  and  Table  D.  The  pump- 
ing work  itself  should  not  be  needlessly  exhausting  ;  for 
this  purpose  it  is  desirable  that  it  should  be  carried  on 
by  means  of  those  faculties  in  each  table  which  are  not 
so  weak  that  their  action  causes  of  itself  excessive  strain. 

Moreover,  any  kind  of  friction  or  jolting  causes  waste  ; 
and  in  order  to  avoid  friction  it  is  desirable  that  the 
whole  mechanism  should  be  in  a  condition  of  free 
mobility,  and,  as  nearly  as  possible,  in  one  of  perfect 
equipoise.  We  are  using  the  words  "balance"  and 
"  equipoise  "  ;  we  must  try  to  attach  to  them  some  definite 
meaning. 

When  such  words  as  balance  and  equipoise  are  used 
in  relation  to  physical  matters,  no  one  is  misled  by  them  ; 
everyone  understands  them  to  refer  to  a  state  of  mobile- 
stable  equilibrium..  But  when  they  are  used  to  describe 
a  mental  condition,  many  persons  suppose  them  to 
connote  the  stolid  variety  of  stable  equilibrium.  In 
order,  therefore,  to  clear  away  misapprehension  we  will 
begin  by  defining  the  terms  we  are  going  to  use. 

If  you  try  gently  to  raise  one  edge  of  a  heavy  table 
so  that  it  shall  have  only  two  legs  on  the  floor,  you  fail. 
If  you  try  more  energetically,  and  raise  it  a  very  little 


Balance  of  the  Nervous  System      79 

way,  it  falls  back,  as  soon  as  you  take  your  hands  away, 
into  its  former  position,  and  stays  in  it.  The  condition 
of  such  a  table  is  that  of  a  stolid  or  fixed  "  stable 
equilibrium." 

The  condition  of  unstable  equilibrium  is  that  of  a 
rickety  little  table,  which  a  slight  push  will  cause  to  fall 
over.  This  condition  reaches  its  climax  in  the  case  of  a 
stick,  cut  off  straight  at  the  end,  which  has  been  made 
to  stand  upright  on  the  floor ;  the  least  touch  sends  it 
over.  It  has  no  tendency  to  recover  its  lost  balance. 
A  clever  juggler  can,  however,  poise  it  on  his  finger,  and 
by  incessant  attention  restore  its  balance,  before  it  falls, 
every  time  it  leans  over. 

There  is  a  third  possible  condition,  that  of  a  mobile- 
stable  equilibrium.  This  is  the  condition  to  which  we 
refer  when  we  speak  of  a  pair  of  scales  being  balanced, 
or  in  equipoise ;  the  pans  are  equally  weighted,  and  a 
touch  will  move  them  up  or  down ;  but  when  left  to 
itself  the  whole  apparatus  tends  to  return  to  a  "  normal  " 
position  of  equipoise.  Many  toys  illustrate  this  mode 
of  balance  ;  none  better  than  the  old-fashioned  tumbler 
doll,  which  stands  on  the  flat  surface  of  a  hemisphere  of 
wood.  A  breath  will  set  the  toy  rocking  in  any  direc- 
tion, but  it  recovers  immediately,  and  then  sways  over 
in  the  opposite  direction ;  and  so  backwards  and 
forwards  till  the  momentum  is  worn  out  by  the  slight 
friction  and  the  rocking  motion  dies  out,  when  the  doll 
is  found  to  have  settled  back  into  her  original  position. 
She  owes  her  stability  not  to  any  stolidity  but  to  being 
judiciously  loaded. 

The  old  Cornish  Logan  stone  was  a  famous  instance 
of  this  kind  of  equilibrium. 


8o    The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

To  our  Celtic  forefathers  the  Logan  was  sacred. 
And  when  a  set  of  young  naval  officers  destroyed  the 
fine  balance  of  the  Cornish  Logan  and  reduced  it  to  a 
state  of  stolid  equilibrium,  they  were  railed  at  as  drunken 
ruffians,  and  ordered,  under  pain  of  severe  punishment, 
to  do  the  best  they  could  to  repair  the  mischief  they 
had  caused.  When  a  set  of  persons  (in  or  out  of  holy 
orders)  make  a  career  of  inflicting  the  analogous  out- 
rage on  the  delicate  equipoise  of  children's  minds,  they 
are  called  "  successful  sc  .  .  .  " — well,  never  mind  what 
they  are  called'-,  let  those  wear  the  cap  who  find  it  fits 
them.  You  and  I  are  not,  we  hope,  upsetting  other 
people's  Logans,  except  occasionally  and  by  accident ; 
we  do  not  make  it  a  career  or  do  it  on  purpose. 

Let  us  go  back  to  the  inquiry  which  concerns  us. 
The  Logan  is  an  idle,  useless  thing,  a  symbol  merely 
(but  sacred  because  a  symbol)  of  a  great  truth.  The 
brain  of  a  child  is  neither  idle  nor  useless  ;  it  has  a  very 
real  function,  viz. : — to  pump  force  directly  from  unseen 
cosmic  stores  on  to  the  nervous  system.  I  use  the  word 
"  pump "  advisedly ;  the  brain  brings  force  from  the 
unseen  on  to  the  nervous  system  when  it  carries  on 
steadily  a  movement  of  rocking  or  alternation.  This 
movement  goes  on  to  more  effective  purpose,  and  with 
less  friction,  in  proportion  as  the  equipoise  is  more 
complete  and  the  balance  more  perfect. 

Race-inheritance,  local  custom,  claims  of  duties,  family 
ties,  affections  and  tradition — these  are  the  loadings 
which  make  the  equipoise  "stable,"  i.e.  determine  a 
position  towards  which  the  mind  tends  when  coming  to 
rest.  But  there  should  be  no  fixity  or  friction  to  prevent 
its   swaying   temporarily  out   of  that   position    in    any 


Balance  of  the  Nervous  System      8 1 

direction,  on  the  slightest  stimulus  from  without.  On 
this  condition,  mobility  being  at  its  maximum  and 
friction  at  its  minimum,  the  successive  events  of  life  set 
up  a  maximum  of  force-induction  with  a  minimum  of 
waste. 

Now  the  balance,  the  rocking,  is  between  Table  C 
and  Table  D.  (As  I  said  before,  if  you  do  not  think 
my  distribution  of  the  items  in  the  two  tables  satis- 
factory you  had  better  write  out  one  for  yourself  which 
seems  to  you  more  so.)  But  as  the  very  fact  of  exerting 
a  weak  faculty  uses  up  force,  the  rocking  action  should 
be  set  up,  the  friction  overcome,  the  equipoise  restored, 
and  the  nervous  system  saturated  with  force,  by  the 
alternate  action  of  faculties  naturally  strong  or  already 
in  good  working-practice,  before  the  attempt  is  made  to 
get  into  use  those  which  are  weak,  either  by  nature  or 
from  artificial  disuse. 

In  this  chapter  we  are  trying  to  get  a  clear  idea  of 
the  general  meaning  of  nervous  balance.  I  will  there- 
fore give  a  familiar  instance,  just  by  way  of  clearing  up 
our  conceptions  of  its  mode  of  working. 

If  digestive  power  (No.  i  in  C)  is  weak  and  the 
character  generous  or  dreamy,  and  health  has  suffered 
from  want  of  food,  it  is  unwise  to  begin  treatment,  either 
by  loading  the  stomach  with  more  food  than  it  is  able 
to  digest,  or  by  having  much  recourse  to  condiments 
which  directly  stimulate  appetite  and  digestion.  It  is 
found  better  to  begin  by  exercising  the  time-sense,  if 
that  be  in  fairly  good  working  order  ;  laying  stress  on 
punctuality,  especially  in  the  time  of  taking  food ;  and 
by  feeding  to  the  sound  of  music,  not  of  a  very  refined 
or  emotional   or   intellectual  kind,   but  such  as  derives 

6 


82   The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

most  of  its  charm  from  a  steady  marked  rhythmic  beat, 
such  as  dance-music,  marches,  etc.  When  a  little  force 
has  been  generated  by  this  means,  the  digestion  can, 
with  less  risk  of  injury,  be  appealed  to  to  exert  itself. 
If  the  time-sense  is  so  weak  that  punctuality  worries 
and  rhythmic  music  annoys,  some  other  number  in 
Table  C  should  be  acted  on ;  No.  3,  the  sense  of  the 
concrete,  by  rousing  interest  in  some  concrete  process, 
especially  some  process  of  growing,  manufacturing,  or 
cooking  food  ;  or  No.  4  may  be  stimulated  by  the  scent 
or  appearance  of  the  food  itself 

The  above  is  given,  not  as  offering  new  advice  but  as 
an  instance  to  show  the  working  of  the  balance  in  cases 
with  which  everyone  is  already  familiar. 

The  points  on  which  it  is  desirable  to  fix  attention 
just  now  are: — 

1.  That  a  rocking  alternation  between  Table  C  and 
Table  D  supplies  the  force  necessary  for  keeping  conduct 
in  essentials  steady. 

2.  That  any  friction  in  the  rocking  wastes  force. 

3.  That  obstruction  to  the  rocking  is  likely  to  jolt 
conduct  off  its  proper  guiding  rails.  It  is  found  practi- 
cally easier  to  get  children  to  "  behave  well,"  i.e.  to  act 
in  an  orderly  manner  suitable  to  the  needs  of  their 
environment,  if  no  one  tries  to  interfere  with  the  free 
swinging  of  their  minds  between  ideas  apparently 
contrary  to  each  other  or  feelings  apparently  antagon- 
istic to  each  other.  This  is  the  result  of  experience. 
The  same  condition  of  free  swing  of  thought  is  found 
also  to  make  the  acquisition  of  knowledge  both  easier 
and  less  injurious  to  health  of  body  and  mind  than  it 
otherwise  would  be. 


Balance  of  the  Nervous  System      83 

The  following  summary  of  what  is  known  on  the 
subject  of  nerve-balance  has  received  endorsement  from 
eminent  representatives  both  of  theology  and  psycho- 
logical science. 

The  Creed  of  Sanity 

Unity  is  the  property  of  the  Infinite,  the  Absolute, 
the  Eternal.  Dividedness  is  the  property  of  the  finite, 
the  phenomenal,  the  transitory.  Every  attempt,  either 
to  eternalise  phenomenal  distinctions, or  to  phenomenalise 
Eternal  Unity,  is  contrary  to  the  true  nature  of  man; 
and  tends  towards  the  destruction  of  mental  health. 
The  great  All  is  a  jealous  God,  and  will  not  suffer  His 
honour  to  be  given  to  any  partial  manifestation  of  good. 
Every  finite  or  phenomenal  good  which  man  invests 
with  attributes  belonging  only  to  the  Infinite,  avenges 
the  majesty  of  the  Unseen  Unity  by  injuring  the  brain 
of  man. 

What  force  or  creative  energy  is  in  its  own  nature  we 
do  not  know  ;  but  we  know  that  every  mode  of  it  with 
which  we  are  acquainted  works  by  a  pulsation  of  contrary 
motions.  All  forms  are  evolved  by  pulsating  Force,  yet 
itself  is  necessarily  formless. 

Man  is  the  child  of  this  pulsating  or  alternating 
Creator;  not  His  mere  handywork,  made  arbitrarily, 
unlike  Himself;  but  the  outcome  of  His  very  thought- 
processes;  and  sanity,  for  us,  means  thinking  as  He 
thinks,  so  far  as  we  think  at  all.  And  He  thinks,  or,  at 
least,  works,  in  an  incessant  rhythmic  pulsation  of 
alternate  constructing  and  sweeping  away.  Man  should 
imitate  this  pulsating  activity  within  his  own  mind.  His 
studies  should  alternate   the  formation  of  defined  and 


84   The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

contrasted  conceptions  with  the  unifying  of  those  con- 
ceptions ;  and  his  religious  exercises  should  suspend  all 
concrete  conceptions  in  adoration  of  the  inconceivable 
Unity.  If  we  thus  embody  the  principle  of  pulsation  in 
our  thought-life,  it  becomes  a  source  of  constant  power, 
like  the  movement  of  our  lungs  ;  if  we  forget  it,  we  waste 
force  at  each  effort.  False  religions  tend  to  arrest  the 
natural  fading  away  of  things  that  have  served  their 
purpose,  whether  those  things  be  visible  forms  or  mental 
conceptions.  But  the  token  of  the  covenant  made  by 
Infinite  Knowledge  with  man,  is  the  Rainbow,  which  no 
man  can  capture,  or  embalm,  or  enshrine  :  which  is  made 
by  the  breaking  up  of  the  one  light  into  many  colours, 
to  fade,  before  long,  into  the  unity  of  white  light  again  ; 
and  which,  when  it  fades,  leaves  nowhere  in  the  world  a 
trace  of  its  ever  having  existed,  except  on  man's  heart 
an  impression  of  spiritual  beauty,  and  in  his  mind  a 
knowledge  of  the  laws  of  light. 

It  is  vain  that  we  haste  to  rise  early  and  late  take 
rest,  and  devour  many  carefully  compiled  text-books  ;  to 
those  who  love  the  Invisible,  formless,  alternate-beating 
Unity,  the  knowledge  which  is  power  comes  even  during 
sleep. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE   INVERT   CONSCIOUSNESS 

Five  years  ago  the  reading  public  was  startled  by  the 
production  of  a  book  ^  written  in  prison,  which  contained 
two  apparently  conflicting  revelations.  One  portion  was 
such  a  picture  of  anomalous  selfishness  as  made  the 
crimes  of  which  the  author  had  been  convicted  seem 
light  by  comparison.  The  other  consisted  of  a  masterly 
attempt,  and  perhaps  the  first  real  attempt  known  in 
literature,  to  analyse  the  intellectual  characteristics  of 
Jesus  of  Nazareth.  What  is  the  mysterious  underground 
link  of  connection  between  the  sinner  and  the  Saviour 
which  gave  to  Oscar  Wilde  an  insight  into  the  mind  of 
Christ  that  St  Agnes  or  St  John  might  envy  ?  We  are 
accustomed  to  think  that  a  repentant  thief  has  his  share 
of  Paradise,  and  that  Magdalene  was  forgiven  because 
she  loved  much  ;  but  what  opened  the  door  of  Revelation 
to  an  unrepentant  man  who,  on  his  own  showing,  had  no 
idea  of  the  meaning  of  love,  except  as  connected  with 
the  gratification  of  his  own  sensations  and  superficial 
emotions? 

There  exists  a  condition  of  inverse  consciousness  which 
appears  to  be  the  common  basis  of  the  highest  genius 
and  the  most  incurable  insanity ;  of  the  most  sublime 

'  De  Proftmdis,  by  Oscar  Wilde. 

«5 


86   The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

renunciation  and  the  most  abject  depravity;  of  the  most 
illuminating  logic  and  the  most  unreasoning  perverse- 
ness.  The  origin,  the  cause,  of  this  inverse  conscious- 
ness is  hidden  in  mystery  ;  we  may,  perhaps,  get  some 
light  upon  it  when  we  have  succeeded  in  solving  the 
similar  but  simpler  question,  why  the  scarlet  pimpernel, 
which  usually  produces  red  flowers  with  blue  centres, 
occasionally  inverts,  producing  blue  flowers  with  red 
centres.  A  tendency  to  occasional  inversion  exists  both 
in  nature  and  in  human  consciousness;  and  we  must 
accept  the  fact  that  it  does  so.  We  must  also  accept 
this  other  fact — that  individuals  of  invert  consciousness, 
whether  it  has  manifested  itself  as  genius  or  as  insanity, 
as  logic  or  as  perverseness,  as  sublime  indifference  to 
one's  own  suffering  or  as  abject  indifference  to  right 
and  wrong,  understand  each  other  instinctively  as  no 
ordinary  mortals  understand  any  of  them. 

The  invert  may  be  described  as  a  spontaneous  philo- 
sopher, in  this  sense,  viz.,  that,  whereas  the  highest 
religious  philosophy  leads  us  towards  a  belief  that  there 
must  be  a  goodness  in  all  things,  even  those  which  seem 
to  us  evil,  the  invert  knows,  without  any  proof  or  learn- 
ing, that  some  things  are  good  which  seem  to  himself 
evil.  Most  little  children  avoid  or  hate  whatever  causes 
them  the  sensation  of  pain.  Advancing  experience  (in 
the  cricket  field  and  elsewhere)  teaches  them  that  it  is 
advisable  to  learn  to  bear  pain  with  fortitude ;  and  that 
those  who  will  not  do  so  are  shut  out  from  many  joys 
and  pleasures  ;  but,  to  little  children,  pain,  so  far  as  it 
influences  them  at  all,  is  distasteful.  But  I  knew  one 
infant,  who,  at  a  year  and  a  half  old,  seemed  to  take 
keen  interest  in  pain.     Like  all  inverts,  he  was   incon- 


The  Invert  Consciousness  87 

sistent ;  the  flesh  was  weak  though  the  spirit  was  willing  ; 
if  he  hurt  himself  badly  he  would  scream  like  any 
normal  child.  But  as  soon  as  he  recovered  from  the 
shock,  he  would  crawl  (he  still  crawled  more  easily 
than  he  walked)  to  the  object  which  had  hurt  him 
and  knock  himself  up  against  it,  more  gently,  but 
repeatedly ;  apparently  trying  to  reproduce,  on  a  small 
and  manageable  scale,  the  sensation  which,  on  the 
larger  scale,  had  overpowered  him ;  and  looking  the 
while  as  much  absorbed  and  interested  as  if  he  had 
found  a  new  toy.^ 

We  are  all  influenced  in  some  way  by  the  public 
opinion  of  persons  of  our  own  age,  rank,  and  society. 
Most  of  us  incline  naturally  to  follow  it.  Inverts,  how- 
ever, are  impelled  against  an  action  when  public  opinion 
is  in  favour  of  it,  and  towards  it  when  public  opinion 
condemns  it.  It  is  known  to  schoolmasters  that  a  far 
better  protection  against  vice  than  any  sermonising  by 
grown-ups  is  a  strong  public  opinion,  among  the  boys 
themselves,  that  vice  is  "caddish"  and  "bad  form." 
There  are  boys,  here  and  there,  who  would  be  far  more 
attracted  towards  any  action  by  the  fact  of  its  being 
considered  "  bad  form  "  than  by  any  personal  pleasure 
they  could  derive  from  it.  These  are  the  boys  who 
originate  bad  customs  ;  the  majority  follow  where  they 
are  led.  Probably  Oscar  Wilde  was,  in  boyhood,  one  of 
the  devotees  of  "  bad  form  "  for  its  own  sake. 

The  line  of  cleavage  between  what  seems  good  and 
what  seems  evil  varies  according  to  age,  time,  circum- 
stances, and  individual  taste ;  the  mark  of  the  invert  is 

^  The  child  who  deliberately  hurt  himself  was  grandson  to  the 
man  who  wrote  The  Mystery  of  Pain. 


88   The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

that  he  is  attracted  towards  a  thing  by  the  very  fact 
that  he  is  at  the  moment  fearing  it,  or  feeling  it  to  be 
"  evil," 

James  Hinton  was  a  man  abstemious  by  taste,  and 
preserved  from  personal  vice  by  his  reverence  for 
womanhood  and  his  passionate  tenderness  towards  the 
suffering.  But  he  took  as  much  pains  to  acquire  a 
reputation  for  being  bad,  as  most  men  do  to  preserve  a 
reputation  for  being  good.  He  once  gave,  in  my  hearing, 
as  an  explanation  of  some  of  his  anomalous  vagaries : — 
"  My  God  was  a  vagabond  chap,  with  a  taste  for  low 
company,  who  died  on  the  gallows."  I  quote  this,  not 
as  my  opinion  about  the  Christ,  but  to  explain  why 
I  call  J.  Hinton  an  invert,  and  what  it  was  which  both 
he  and  Oscar  Wilde  perceived  in  the  "  Mind  of  Christ " 
which  escapes  the  perception  of  more  normal  persons. 
It  is  needless  to  point  out  how  unfortunate  is  the 
influence  of  such  utterances,  made  at  random  in  presence 
of  persons  younger  or  less  earnest  than  the  speaker.  I 
only  point  out  that  J.  Hinton,  a  man  of  pure  and 
abstemious  life,  saw  the  Saviour  in  that  aspect.  It  was 
his  way  of  recognising  the  truth  of  the  Divine  paradox : 
"  That  the  lowest  place  was  that  which  the  Highest 
chose." 

Most  Christians  think  of  the  earth  life  of  Christ  as  a 
short  sorrow,  and  of  the  adoration  of  Christendom  as 
what  He  desires,  J.  Hinton  used  to  say :  "  One  would 
accept  being  crucified,  it  does  not  last  long.  But  to  be 
set  up  as  a  standard  and  have  truths  revealed  to  other 
men  trampled  down  in  honour  of  one,  that  is  a  fate  to 
make  the  stoutest  heart  quail." 

It  is  cheap  and  easy  to  dismiss  such    utterances   as 


The  Invert  Consciousness  89 

"  fantastic  "  and  "  crazy."  But  the  invert  consciousness 
exists,  and  exerts  influence  ;  and  those  who  are  guiding 
the  education  of  the  nation  should  surely  study  how  to 
direct  it  towards  useful  ends. 

In  the  "  Preparation  of  the  Child  for  Science,"  I 
pointed  out  a  fact  which  has  always  struck  me  as  terribly 
significant.  If  we  take  a  two-dimensional  section  of  a 
gentian,  we  may  get  a  bud-tip  appearing,  in  section,  as 
an  isolated  anomaly,  in  no  visible  connection  with  any 
portion  of  the  open  flower.  But  if,  instead  of  cutting 
the  thing  to  suit  our  flat  views,  we  had  looked  at  it  in 
three  dimensions,  we  should  have  seen,  not  only  that 
the  odd  point  was  connected  with  the  flower  through  its 
stalk,  but  also  that  it  marks  the  precise  place  where 
another  flower  would  have  opened  in  course  of  time  had 
we  not  interfered  to  reduce  the  whole  to  the  two- 
dimensional  condition. 

Various  mathematical  studies  have  thrown  a  vivid 
light  on  the  phenomenon  of  inversion ;  among  them  is 
one  by  Babbage,  published  in  1837,  under  the  title 
Ninth  Bridgewater  Treatise.  Lines  and  shapes  in  three 
dimensions  which,  in  themselves,  are  continuous  and 
normal,  produce,  if  their  shadows  are  cast  on  flat  paper, 
all  manner  of  anomalies,  inversions,  and  irregularities. 
It  is  inferred  that  normal  facts  in  higher  dimen- 
sions might,  when  reflected  on  the  human  three- 
dimensional  consciousness,  account  for  anomalies  and 
apparently  miraculous  conditions.  The  experiment  was 
therefore  tried  of  inverting  certain  relations  in  the 
equations  of  regular  curves  and  families  of  curves.  A 
most  interesting  result  followed.  The  inverted  equation 
to  a  curve  sometimes  gives  what  is  called  a  "singular 


90   The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

point,"  related  to  the  original  curve  almost  as  a  "rogue 
elephant"  is  to  his  tribe ;  standing  aloof,  in  no  relation 
visible  to  the  eye  with  any  other  point  on  the  curve.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  invert  equation  to  a  family  of  curves 
may  produce  what  is  called  an  "  envelope,"  i.e.  a  curve 
in  contact  with  every  other  member  of  the  family. 
These  anomalous  points  or  curves,  worked  out  in  invert 
equations,  are  called  in  mathematical  terminology, 
singular  solutions-  Numa  Hartog,  the  young  Jew  whose 
brilliant  achievement  in  mathematics  was  the  occasion 
of  opening  university  honours  to  his  co-religionists,  said 
to  me,  in  a  puzzled  kind  of  way,  that  the  chapter  on 
singular  solutions  in  my  husband's  Treatise  on  Differen- 
tial Equations,  "does  not  read  like  a  chapter  of  an 
ordinary  text-book."  It  would  be  strange  if  it  did, 
seeing  that  it  resulted  from  a  devout  study  of  the  mystic 
literature  of  all  ages,  from  Isaiah's  prophecies  to  Tenny- 
son's "  St  Agnes'  Eve,"  My  husband,  in  the  last  years 
of  his  life,  devoted  much  time  to  the  study  of  Frederick 
Denison  Maurice,  the  theological  reformer,  and,  not 
long  before  his  death,  wrote : — "  I  have  made  out  what 
puts  the  whole  subject  of  Singular  Solutions  into  a  state 
of  Unity."  Following  up  clues  given  by  him  at  that 
period,  some  extra-academic  mathematicians  have  worked 
on  the  problem  so  near  his  heart  throughout  his  life,  viz.  : 
— Given  a  child  of  any  anomalous  type,  how  should  his 
education  be  directed  towards  forming  in  him  personal 
habits  tending  towards  constructive  genius  rather  than 
perverse  destructiveness  ;  towards  illuminating  synthesis 
rather  than  brilliant  paradox  ;  towards  useful  originality 
rather  than  vicious  curiosity  ;  towards  a  reverent  and 
sparing  use  of  pleasures,  towards  renunciation  of  that 


The  Invert  Consciousness  9 1 

for  which  other  men  seek,  rather  than  towards  audacious 
snatching  at  what  they  feel  to  be  evil  ? 

When  I  have  tried  to  call  the  attention  of  heads  of 
schools  to  the  dangers  to  which  children  of  exceptional 
type  are  exposed  under  existing  schemes  of  moral  and 
religious  education,  I  have  been  met  by  replies  to  the 
effect  that  a  school  must  be  organised  to  suit  the 
majority,  and  that  exceptional  children  must  take  their 
chance  in  the  general  melee — a  dangerous  doctrine  in 
itself,  it  seems  to  me,  because  genius  has  great  influence, 
for  good  or  ill,  over  the  masses  of  average  men  and 
women.  But  besides  this,  it  is  thought  by  several 
experienced  persons  that  the  scheme  of  mental  habit 
suggested  for  the  protection  of  genius  from  its  special 
mental  and  moral  dangers  would  in  reality  be  good, 
not  bad,  for  the  development  and  stamina  of  average 
children. 

We  are  often  told  by  publishers  and  editors  that  the 
public  is  not  interested  in  speculation  of  this  kind.  But 
if  England  takes  no  interest  in  the  question  whether  its 
young  men  of  abnormal  genius  shall  lay  themselves  on 
the  altar  of  National  Reform  or  rot  away  in  mere  phos- 
phorescent decadence,  why  was  Oscar  Wilde  condemned 
to  prison,  and  why  do  we  perform  religious  services  in 
honour  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  ? 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE   FIXING   OF   GOOD   HABITS 

The  question  of  Ethical  Stability  should  be  of  interest 
to  parents,  and  indeed  to  every  one.  We  are  all  trying 
to  form  in  ourselves  and  our  children  such  habits  as  we 
consider  good  ;  but  we  leave  it  too  much  to  mere  chance 
to  decide  whether  these  good  habits  are  being  formed 
in  a  manner  calculated  to  make  them  stable  under  stress 
and  strain,  or  in  such  a  way  that  they  will  readily  col- 
lapse during  illness  or  over-fatigue.  Some  change  of 
habit  must  be  made  when  nervous  energy  collapses ; 
that  change  should  take  the  form  of  cessation  from  use- 
ful activities.  Such  suspension  of  activity  facilitates 
re-storation  of  latent  force ;  too  often,  however,  the 
change  takes,  instead,  the  form  of  active  violation  of 
good  habits  of  self-restraint  previously  acquired.  The 
question  which  of  the  two  directions  a  temporary  loss 
of  force  shall  take  depends  very  little  on  the  desire  of 
the  individual  at  the  time  (very  few  persons  desire,  at 
the  outset  of  a  fit  of  nervous  exhaustion,  to  become 
drunkards,  morphia-maniacs,  or  murderers),  but  very 
much  upon  the  manner  in  which  the  habit  of  self-restraint 
was  originally  formed,  the  basis  upon  which  it  was  first 
established. 

There  are  several  errors  which  may  be  made  in  forming 


The  Fbdng  of  Good  Habits  93 

habits  of  sobriety,  etc.  One  error  consists  in  indulgence 
of  physical  appetites,  in  themselves  innocent  and 
healthy,  at  wrong  portions  of  the  mental  life. 

The  mental  life  may  be  divided  into  two  portions: 
one  in  which  the  faculty  of  discrimination  between 
external  objects  is  fully  awake,  and  which  we  call 
phase  A  ;  the  other  in  which  the  faculty  of  discrimination 
is  dormant,  or  partially  so :  we  call  this  portion  phase  B. 

Phase  B  includes  sleep,  drowsiness,  day-dreaming,  and 
"brown  studies,"  all  of  which  are  normal  and  healthy 
states  if  not  indulged  in  to  excess  or  at  inconvenient 
seasons.  There  are  unhealthy  modes  of  phase  B,  which 
do  not  concern  us  at  present.  Phase  B  also  includes 
the  condition  of  active  mental  abstraction,  in  which 
general  conceptions  are  formed  ;  in  which  attention  is  so 
concentrated  on  the  task  of  seizing  the  point  of  similarity 
between  two  or  more  things  or  ideas,  that  it  is  not  actively 
awake  to  the  points  of  difference  between  them.  The 
mood  in  which  a  child  notices  that  a  cherry  is  soft  and 
a  marble  hard,  that  the  cherry  is  good  to  eat  and  the 
marble  is  not,  that  the  sun  is  bigger  than  the  moon, 
belongs  to  phase  A  ;  the  mood  in  which  it  dawns  on 
him  that  all  these  things  are  round,  the  mood  in  which 
there  is  being  formed  within  him  the  conception  of 
roundness,  belongs  to  phase  B.  The  mood  in  which  a 
musician  com-poses  belongs  to  phase  B  ;  that  in  which 
he  afterwards  corrects  his  composition,  to  phase  A.  The 
pouring  out  of  one's  soul  in  music,  verse,  or  impassioned 
prose,  belongs  to  B  ;  the  decision  which  parts  of  the 
outpour  are  suitable  to  give  to  the  public,  belongs  to  A. 

The  organisation  of  education  can  never  be  anything 
but  empirical   and  chaotic   till    teachers   recognise   the 


94   The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

differences  between  these  two  phases,  and  the  relations 
between  the  two. 

One  of  the  points  which  should  be  attended  to  by 
those  who  would  forge  passion  into  power  is  that  of 
handwriting.  If  the  neurotic  individual  has  taken  pains 
to  cultivate,  for  his  use  during  phase  A,  a  handwriting 
which  is  both  legible  and  characteristic,  this  tends  to 
keep  clear  the  distinction  between  phase  A  and  phase 
B,  for  he  will  find  that  any  change  in  his  usual  hand- 
writing indicates  the  oncoming  either  of  phase  B  or  of 
some  such  disturbance  of  the  nerve-centres  as  accom- 
panies the  irregular  intermixing  of  A  and  B, 

Nothing  is  more  important  for  the  future  ethical 
stability  of  the  individual  than  that  his  constitution 
should  be  trained  to  receive  and  expect  physical  enjoy- 
ments only  during  phase  A.  Neutrality  as  to  physical 
sensations,  as  far  as  this  can  be  secured,  should  be  the 
concomitant  of  phase  B. 

The  reason  for  this  is  obvious.  Physical  enjoyments 
should  be  taken  with  discrimination,  both  as  to  kind  and 
as  to  quantity  ;  the  body  has  a  right,  so  to  speak,  to 
claim  a  normal  amount  of  pleasures  ;  but  it  should  be 
trained  to  time  its  requirements  in  that  direction  so  as 
to  make  its  claim  during  the  times  when  the  discrimin- 
ating faculty  is  awake,  rather  than  when  something 
else  is  going  on  in  the  mind  which  is  incompatible  with 
the  full  alertness  of  the  discriminating  faculty. 

Many  pious  followers  of  ancient  religions  fell  into  the 
strange  error  of  supposing  that  because  the  seeking  of 
physical  pleasure  is  unsuited  to  states  of  internal  revela- 
tion, therefore  the  voluntary  incurring  of  pain  is  a 
suitable  adjunct  to   those  states.     There  could  hardly 


The  Fixing  of  Good  Habits  95 

be  a  greater  mistake.  Whatever  may  be  the  educative 
value  of  suffering — a  wide  question,  not  to  be  touched 
on  here, — the  body  should  be  trained  to  seek,  in  dream- 
moods,  not  strong  sensation  of  any  kind  but  neutrality. 
The  mind  should  be  so  trained  that  it  tends,  when  its 
discriminating  faculties  are  in  less  than  full  activity,  not 
to  mortify  the  body  but  to  forget  it. 

We  will  now  suggest  precautions  to  be  taken  with  a 
view  to  training  certain  kinds  of  desire  for  physical 
pleasure  and  physical  self-assertion  into  the  healthy 
habit  of  going  to  sleep  whenever  the  faculty  of  dis- 
crimination is  lethargic  or  dormant. 

Some  persons  have  carried  the  theory  of  synchronism 
so  far  as  to  insist  that  infants  should  not  be  allowed 
to  suck  themselves  to  sleep.  The  present  writer  doubts 
the  necessity  for  any  such  interference,  as  long  as  the 
food  is  uniform,  monotonous,  and  absolutely  natural. 
But  there  can  be  no  question  as  to  the  wisdom  of  begin- 
ning the  rhythmic  discipline  as  soon  as  the  child  is  old 
enough  to  have  sweets.  No  sweets  or  biscuits  to  suck 
oneself  to  sleep  with  should  be  allowed. 

No  day-dreaming  should  be  allowed  at  meal  times. 
Food  should  be  taken  slowly  ;  and  eating  may  be  inter- 
rupted by  short  intervals  of  chatter  and  laughter ;  but 
no  silent  dawdling  should  be  allowed  during  the  meal. 
A  period  of  silence  after  a  meal  is  not  bad  in  its  way. 

Unusually  nice  things,  choice  fruits,  etc.,  should  always 
be  the  concomitant  of  social  festivities,  not  the  con- 
solation of  loneliness.  If  you  have  to  leave  a  child 
alone,  and  wish  to  give  it  some  compensation  for  solitude, 
let  this  take  the  form  of  a  mental  interest  (a  fresh  toy, 
picture,  book,  etc.),  not  of  a  physical  sensation. 


96   The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

Table-courtesies,  attention  to  other  people's  wants, 
etc.,  have  another  function  besides  those  of  training  in 
"  good  manners,"  and  of  promoting  unselfishness  ;  they 
help  to  keep  up  the  habit  of  synchronism  between  the 
act  of  feeding  the  body  and  the  mental  condition  of 
alertness  as  to  outer  facts.  Get  the  child,  by  every 
possible  means,  into  the  habit  of  noticing  who  wants 
salt  or  bread,  whenever  he  is  eating ;  and  of  not  noticing 
what  is  going  on  round  him  when  he  is  engaged  in 
study. 

A  hostess  who  invites  friends,  especially  young  friends, 
to  partake  of  luxurious  food  and  choice  fruits,  or  to 
make  jokes  in  a  scented  and  flower-bedecked  room,  is 
morally  bound  to  keep  the  conversation  strictly  on  the 
discriminative  plane.  It  need  not  be  frivolous,  or  un- 
improving ;  it  may  be  about  botany,  astronomy, 
politics,  or  history ;  but  it  should  deal  with  the  super- 
ficial aspect  of  those  things ;  with  obvious  differences, 
not  with  underlying  unity  between  them.  This  caution 
should  be  especially  observed  if  pleasant  wines  are 
offered.  On  the  other  hand,  a  hostess  who  intends  that 
her  house  should  be  a  centre  of  philosophy,  a  place  of 
exercise  for  the  faculty  of  discovering  general  principles 
underlying  phenomena  apparently  diverse  or  discordant, 
is  bound  to  keep  a  severe  check  on  her  housekeeper  in 
the  matter  of  showing  what  the  establishment  can  do 
in  the  way  of  a  luxurious  feed.  The  drinkables,  on  such 
occasions,  should  be,  as  far  as  possible,  teetotal  in  kind. 
If  any  of  the  guests  are  invalids  and  cannot  digest 
without  a  modicum  of  alcohol,  it  should  be  sound  in 
quality  but  not  specially  tempting  in  flavour,  and  should 
not  be  pressed  on  anyone,  especially  on  the  young. 


The  Fixing  of  Good  Habits         97 

Wherever  the  underlying  principle  of  monism,  of 
unity  among  apparent  opposites,  is  being  thought  of, 
brilliant  witticisms  should  be  severely  at  a  discount. 
So  should  dramatic  gesticulation,  and,  in  fact,  all 
spontaneous  self-assertion  of  the  body,  and  all  that 
ministers  to  mental  shovv-i-ness.  During  discussions 
of  underlying  principles,  men  and  women  should  be 
encouraged  to  treat  each  other  as  comrades  in  investiga- 
tion, rather  than  as  persons  of  opposite  sex.  Polite 
attentions  from  men  as  such  to  women  as  such  should 
be  accompanied  by  conversation  which  encourages  the 
sense  of  contrast  and  the  exercise  of  faculties  of 
discrimination. 

Careless  readers  might  suggest  that  all  this  savours  of 
Puritanism.  A  moment's  reflection  suffices  to  remind 
us  that  Puritanism  discouraged  fun,  feasting,  frolic  and 
flirting,  at  all  times.  Modern  medical  science  ac- 
knowledges the  usefulness  of  them  as  integral  portions 
of  normal  life  ;  it  discourages  indulgence  in  them  only 
at  wrong  periods  of  the  mental  cycle.  From  the  point  of 
view  of  modern  medical  science.  Pan,  the  horrible  satyr, 
the  parent  of  all  the  most  hideous  vices,  was  really  The 
One,  The  All,  the  same  conception  of  the  Unity  of 
Creation  as  the  I  Am  of  Moses  ;  but — mark  the  difference 
— approached  without  the  special  precautions  with  which 
Moses  surrounded  the  approach  to  the  Holy  Mountain 
whereon  he  had  seen  the  Unity  of  the  Creator. 

The  rules  above  suggested  are  important  for  all 
children.  There  are  certain  extra  precautions  which 
are  advisable  in  the  case  of  highly  neurotic  young 
persons  and  of  those  who  possess  (or  who  are  possessed 
by  ?)  that  mysterious  faculty  called  Genius. 

7 


9  8    The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

Genius,  of  whatever  kind,  and  whatever  other  elements 
may  go  to  make  up  its  composition,  always  has  for  one 
of  its  main  ingredients  an  unusual  development  of  the 
faculty  of  monism.  Genius  does,  at  certain  times,  dis- 
criminate very  clearly  ;  but  some  form  or  other  of  what 
we  have  called  "  phase  B "  is,  in  the  man  of  genius, 
more  profound  and  definite  than  is  the  case  with 
ordinary  mortals.  The  process  of  seeing  a  unity  under- 
lying phenomena  which  to  the  external  discrimination 
seemed  diverse,  is,  for  genius,  not  a  mere  restful  dream, 
but  a  positive  working-implement  (intellectual,  artistic, 
or  spiritual). 

The  space  at  our  disposal  does  not  permit  us  to  go 
into  the  proofs  of  this  assertion  ;  we  need  only,  here, 
remind  our  readers  that,  while  ordinary  painters  can 
produce  striking  likenesses  of  individuals,  the  painter  of 
great  genius  can  produce  an  ideal  type-face  —  say  a 
philosopher  which  is  like  every  portrait  of  a  philosopher 
that  one  ever  saw ;  or  a  maiden  who  reminds  every 
lover  of  his  lady-love ;  or  a  Christ  in  which  every  serious- 
minded  person  sees  a  resemblance  to  the  teacher  who 
has  most  inspired  him ;  or  a  woodland  scene  which 
makes  each  admirer  suspect  that  the  painter  has  visited 
his  or  her  own  favourite  nook  in  the  woods.  Similarly, 
while  all  ordinary  astronomers  were  making  observations 
on  the  motions  of  the  moon,  and  ordinary  physicists  on 
the  fall  of  various  bodies  towards  the  earth,  Newton 
declared  that  the  two  sets  of  movements  were  subject 
to  a  common  law ;  while  ordinary  naturalists  were  busy 
discussing  which  plants  or  animals  were  related  to  each 
other,  and  where  science  was  compelled  to  infer  that 
special  kind  of  creation   which   constitutes   a    separate 


The  Fixing  of  Good  Habits  99 

species,  Darwin  showed  that  species  are  probably  old 
and  fixed  varieties. 

Genius  is  not  a  disease  ;  it  is  rather,  like  parturition, 
a  condition  of  normal  and  healthy  fertility,  but  it  is  a 
condition  in  which,  under  our  present  artificial  social 
conditions,  extra  precautions  are  desirable  in  order  to 
prevent  its  becoming  the  starting-point  of  disease. 

The  precautions  specially  desirable  during  the  com- 
position phase  of  genius  are  such  as  the  following : — 
Food  rather  less  in  bulk  than  the  individual's  usual 
quantity  (to  be  made  up  for  when  the  fit  has  passed 
over),  lighter  and  more  digestible  in  kind,  and  less 
highly  flavoured.  Alcohol  (if  any)  less  in  quantity  than 
usual,  and  never  taken  in  a  room  alone,  or  between 
meals.  Extra  reserve  in  intercourse  with  the  opposite 
sex.  Strict  chastenedness  of  conversation  ;  abstaining 
not  only  from  the  least  approach  to  anything  unseemly 
in  itself,  but  also  from  all  levity,  from  jests  at  the  expense 
of  others ;  from  even  the  appearance  of  irreverence  or 
unkind  speech ;  and  great  moderation  in  the  matter  of 
brilliant  and  showy  wit. 

Young  people  of  genius,  to  do  them  justice,  nearly  all 
evolve  an  instinct  of  self-protection  and  would  naturally 
seek  the  shelter  of  such  precautions  as  I  have  indicated. 
But  officious  friends  are  much  too  prone  to  interfere, 
wondering  why  the  youth  or  girl  cannot  be  "  like  other 
people";  and  especially  why  he  cannot  behave,  now, 
like  his  usual  self  If  he  is  ill,  let  him  go  to  a  doctor. 
If  he  is  not  ill  enough  to  need  medical  care,  they  "have 
no  patience  with  whims  "  in  the  matter  of  food.  And 
why  need  he  give  himself  airs  of  being  glum  and  self- 
absorbed  ?     He  is  not  working  so  hard  as  all  that  comes 


I  oo  The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

to.  Besides,  he  found  time  to  go  for  a  walk  with  a 
serious  friend ;  why  couldn't  he,  instead,  find  time  to 
join  in  the  fun  in  the  drawing-room  and  to  dance  attend- 
ance on  his  girl-cousins  ?     And  so  on. 

"  Why  cannot  he  be  like  other  people  ? "  Because 
Nature  has  decreed  that,  at  certain  crises  of  his  life,  he 
shall  not ;  that  he  must  be  more  reserved,  more  reticent, 
more  chastened  than  others  need  to  be,  or  else  he  will 
become  worse  than  others  are.  Because,  while  the  fit  of 
com-position  is  on  him,  the  man  is  a  consecrated 
priest  and  prophet  of  Unity  ;  he  is  not,  for  the  time,  a 
member  of  ordinary  human  society ;  he  is  bound  to 
dwell  alone  in  the  desert;  and,  if  not  faithful  to  The 
Holy  One,  terribly  likely  to  fall  into  the  clutches  of  the 
wicked,  leering  Pan. 

Some  writer  has  said  that  "  A  woman  should  be  an 
angel  to  marry  a  genius " ;  and  sometimes  indeed  it 
does  seem  so.  But  the  wives  of  men  of  genius  would 
have  much  less  need  of  angelic  forbearance  in  later  life, 
if  they  had,  before  marriage,  enough  common-sense  and 
moral  arithmetic  to  count  the  cost  of  what  they  are 
about  to  do;  if  they  would  decide  at  once,  either  to 
forego  the  special  joys  which  genius  sheds  around  it,  or 
to  endure  the  extra  precautions  necessary  to  preserve 
its  delicate  balance. 

We  have  said  that  the  body  should  be  trained  to  time 
its  cravings  for  physical  enjoyment  so  as  to  synchronise 
with  mental  moods  of  dis-crimination.  This  rule  might 
legitimately  be  carried  out  absolutely  and  without  re- 
servation, and  should  be  carried  out  as  far  as  circum- 
stances make  it  possible.  In  all  moods  to  which  the 
words  com-pose  and  com-position    can  be  applied,  the 


The  Fixing  of  Good  Habits        i  o  i 

body  should  seek  ease,  neutrality  of  sensation,  the  mere 
supplying  of  its  needs ;  all  sensation  which  is  either 
acutely  pleasurable  or  novel,  as  well  as  all  freaks  of 
physical  curiosity  and  all  vigorous  and  exciting  modes 
of  muscular  exertion,  should  co-incide  with  moods  of 
active  mental  dis-crimination. 

There  is  another  canon  of  ethical  safety,  quite  as 
important  to  observe  as  the  above,  but  it  cannot  be  so 
absolutely  or  clearly  stated.  It  will  therefore  need  a 
little  more  explanation.  It  is  that  of  training  the  body 
to  abstain,  when  the  discriminating  faculties  are  wholly 
or  partially  dormant,  from  spontaneous  ex-pression. 
There  are  regions  of  exception  to  this  rule  ;  if  it  were 
enforced  throughout  the  whole  range  of  possibilities  of 
physical  expression,  it  would  cut  at  the  root  of  all  out- 
ward expression  of  the  mental  process  of  com-position. 
The  hand  must  write  (whether  words  or  notes),  the 
voice  must  utter,  the  brush  must  paint,  while  the  mind 
is  too  busy  listening  to  the  Inspirations  of  the  Unseen 
Source  of  Harmony  to  exercise  its  critical  discriminating 
faculties  to  the  full ;  hence  that  need  of  after-correction 
so  much  insisted  on  by  all  really  great  writers  and 
artists.  There  must  be  ex-pression  of  some  sort  during 
creative,  com-posing  moods,  else  there  can  be  no  art ; 
the  hand  must  be  trained  to  register  impulses  as  they 
pass  through  the  half-conscious  mind,  in  order  that  the 
discriminating  faculty  may  afterwards  possess  what  has 
been  so  registered,  as  material  to  work  upon.  All  true 
art  consists  of  selection  made  by  the  discriminating 
faculty,  when  fully  awake,  out  of  material  inspired 
through  the  com-posing  faculty  while  the  discrimination 
was  wholly  or  partially  dormant.     All  originality  in  art 


I02  The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

depends  on  the  sacred  right-to-go-wrong  among  art 
material,  compensated  by  a  corresponding  after-exercise 
of  the  correcting-power  of  discrimination. 

But,  as  impulses  towards  physical  activity  of  a  harm- 
less kind  must  be  freely  indulged  during  phase  B,  in 
the  interests  of  the  artistic  development,  there  is  all  the 
more  need  that  the  body  should  be  sternly  trained  in 
the  habit  of  using,  in  dreamy  moods,  only  such  modes 
of  ex-pression  as  can  be  harmlessly  mis-used.  It  ought 
to  be  more  generally  noticed  than  it  hitherto  has  been, 
that  all  kinds  of  freaks  of  curiosity  pass  through  the  sub- 
conscious mind  of  imaginative  persons  ;  and  of  all  those 
of  neurotic,  ascetic,  or  specially  religious  temperament. 
Through  the  sub-conscious  mind  of  such  persons  there 
pass  very  often  (alternating  with  other  and  more  useful 
thoughts)  such  ideas  as : — "  I  am  tired  of  life  "  ;  "  John 
Smith  is  a  nuisance;  the  world  would  be  better  off  if  he 
were  out  of  it "  ;  "I  wonder  what  it  feels  like  to  be 
drunk";  "I  should  like  to  get  into  an  opium-dream," 
etc.,  etc.,  etc.  A  medical  man  of  long  experience  assures 
me  that,  under  such  circumstances,  a  fatal  act  may  be 
committed  by  the  hand,  in  response  to  the  freakish 
impulse  of  the  sub-conscious  mind,  before  the  discriminat- 
ing judgment  has  had  time  to  take  cognisance  of  what 
is  going  on.  Juries  in  such  cases  debate  as  to  whether 
the  act  was  wilful  or  involuntary,  whether  their  verdict 
shall  be  "  accident,"  or  "  temporary  insanity,"  or  "  guilty." 
The  verdict  should  properly  be  : — "  Guilty  of  neglect  of 
precautions  for  the  preservation  of  moral  sanity." 

No  person  of  dreamy,  religious,  philosophic,  artistic, 
or  mystical  temperament  should  trust  himself  alone  in  a 
room  with  loaded  firearms,  until    he   has   acquired,  by 


The  Fixing  of  Good  Habits        103 

practice  in  handling  arms  while  unloaded,  the  habits 
which  go  to  make  the  handling  of  them,  when  loaded, 
safe.  Among  the  most  important  of  those  habits  is  that 
of  never  handling  them  at  all  except  while  the  discrimin- 
ating faculty  is  fully  awake.  For  similar  reasons,  the 
hands  of  all  such  persons  should  be  early  trained  never 
to  gravitate,  in  any  form  of  phase  B,  towards  anything 
in  which  a  drug  might  be  contained.  Preservation  from 
crime  and  vice  depends,  for  any  neurotic,  far  less  on  the 
absence  of  potentially  criminal  moods  than  on  the  habit 
of  not  expressing  the  impulses  of  dream-moods,  even 
when  these  are  good,  in  any  manner  or  material  by  which 
harm  could  be  done  if  the  impulse  itself  were  an  evil  one. 
Pens  and  paper,  pencils,  spare  canvases,  oddments  of 
paint,  waste  crewels  and  silks,  are  the  safest  kinds  of 
implements  with  which  to  express  inspiration  as  it  passes. 
And  the  original  register  should  never  be  shown  to  any 
public,  till  it  has  been  well  weeded  or  corrected  in  a  fully 
discriminating  mood. 

One  of  the  most  perilous  habits  which  an  original 
thinker  can  acquire  is  that  of  running  about  among  his 
friends  ex-pressing  his  inspirations  at  their  crude  stage. 
Every  original  thinker  gets  into  states  in  which  wonder- 
ful suggestions  occur  to  him,  of  analogies  or  likenesses 
between  facts  previously  seen  as  diverse.  To  many,  the 
joy  at  times  is  so  overwhelming — and  at  other  times  the 
sense  of  mere  fun  is  so  exhilarating — that  one  feels  one 
cannot  bear  it  alone ;  one  must  share  the  delight  and 
wonder  with  someone.  Yet  the  fact  must  be  faced : — 
the  habit  of  ex-plaining  one's  vision  to  one's  fellow 
mortals,  while  the  vision-mood  is  still  on  one's  soul,  is 
dangerous  to  moral   sanity.     The   great   safeguard    for 


1 04  The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

the  thinker  is  that  which  kept  Moses  safe  among  all  the 
flashing  spiritual  electricity  of  Mount  Sinai : — the  deep 
consciousness  of  being,  not  the  originator  of  the  pleasant 
thought  but  its  recipient ;  of  being,  for  the  time,  not  a 
teacher  of  other  men  but  a  pupil  of  Eternal  Unity ;  of 
being  in  the  actual  presence  of  an  Unseen  Father,  Who 
not  only  gives  the  Revelation,  but  Who  also — if  one  can, 
without  irreverence,  venture  to  say  so — fully  appreciates 
the  fun. 

The  rest  of  this  chapter  will  be  slightly  more  abstract 
and  scientific  than  the  preceding  part ;  but  any  reader 
who  has  the  least  acquaintance  with  the  conception 
alluded  to  in  modern  educational  works  as  "  the  doctrine 
of  association  "  will  find  no  difficulty  in  following  the 
reasoning. 

If  we  are  accustomed  to  do  a  certain  act,  voluntarily, 
whenever  a  certain  idea  or  emotion  is  stirred,  the  act 
becomes  associated  in  our  nervous  system  with  that  idea 
or  emotion,  and  tends,  so  to  speak,  to  do  itself  at  the 
stimulus  of  the  idea  or  emotion ;  the  presence  of  the 
idea  causes  us  to  perform  the  act  involuntarily,  by  sheer 
force  of  habit.  For  this  reason  it  is  important,  not  only 
to  form  good  habits,  but  to  associate  them,  during  the 
process  of  formation,  with  motives,  ideas,  and  emotions 
likely  to  last  throughout  life. 

For  the  first  twelve  years  or  so  of  a  child's  life  it  is 
impossible  to  guess  what  class  of  emotions  or  ideas  will 
appeal  most  strongly  to  him  later  on.  Therefore  it  is 
wiser  not  to  try  to  link  the  good  habits  which  are  being 
formed  with  any  motive  which  seems  to  sway  him 
specially  ;  but  rather  to  appeal  to  quite  general  ones  : — 
all  the  persons  about  him,  especially  those  with  whom 


The  Fixing  of  Good  Habits        1 05 

he  lives,  wish  him  to  be  clean,  punctual,  polite,  etc.,  and 
things  will  be  made  pleasant  to  himself  if  he  does  as  they 
wish.  This  vague  combination  of  altruism  and  egoism 
is  a  sufficient  basis  for  the  formation  of  character  in 
childhood.  During  the  period  of  adolescence  the 
motives  which  will  ultimately  dominate  begin  to  stir  in 
the  consciousness.  Parents  and  teachers  too  often  make 
the  mistake  of  imagining  that  it  comes  within  their 
function  to  determine  by  what  motives  a  pupil  shall  be 
swayed.  That  question  does  not  depend  on  any  de- 
cision of  theirs.  As  well  might  a  hatching  hen  decide 
that  the  eggs  on  which  she  is  sitting  shall  develop  into 
partridges  and  not  into  ducks !  What  does  depend,  to 
some  extent,  on  the  hen's  action,  is,  whether  the  develop- 
ment which  is  going  on  shall  be  full  and  harmonious  or 
arrested  and  impotent ;  whether  the  ducks  or  partridges 
(as  the  case  may  be)  shall  have  their  limbs  in  good 
working  order,  or  shall  be  lop-sided  and  helpless  to 
carry  out  their  own  purposes.  "  If  you  train  up  a  child 
in  the  way  he  should  go,"  said  an  eminent  psychologist 
of  the  last  generation,  "  when  he  is  old  he  will  not 
depart  from  it.  If  he  departs  from  the  way  in  which 
you  have  tried  to  train  him,  it  is  because  you  have  tried 
to  train  him  in  a  way  which  he  should  not  have  gone, 
one  in  which  Nature  never  intended  him  to  go." 

This  is  now  perfectly  acknowledged  by  all  psychologists 
worth  mentioning.  They  know  quite  well  that  the 
business  of  the  teacher  is  to  found,  on  a  basis  of 
motives  which  exist,  habits  which  will  be  useful.  The 
only  correction  of  this  formula  which  the  present  writer 
would  venture  to  suggest  is  an  addition.  Found  habits 
which  will  be  useful  on  a  basis  of  such  among  existing 


io6  The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

motives  as  are  likely  to  prove  permanent ;  or,  in  other 
words : — Build  up  good  habits  on  a  basis  within  which 
falls  the  centre  of  gravity  of  the  individual  with  whom 
you  are  dealing. 

Now  what  do  we  mean  by  the  centre  of  gravity  of  a 
character? 

In  any  given  individual,  it  will  be  found  that  some 
motives  potent  in  phase  A  lose  their  hold  in  B  ;  and 
some  which  are  potent  in  B  lose  hold  in  A.  Some 
desires  and  ambitions,  which  appeal  strongly  to  him  in 
A,  seem  to  him  in  B  unworthy  and  trivial ;  and  some 
aspirations  which  stir  profound  emotion  in  B  are  judged 


by  the  waking  discrimination  of  A  to  be  too  refined,  too 
subtle,  too  altruistic  for  the  present  stage  of  existence. 
But  there  is  probably  always  a  range  of  motives  which 
appeal  to  the  heart  of  the  individual  in  both  phases. 
Let  us  picture  the  whole  range  of  motives  which  influence 
him  in  the  A  phase  as  represented  by  the  left-hand 
circle  in  the  diagram,  and  the  whole  range  which 
influence  him  in  the  B  phase  as  represented  by  the  right- 
hand  one  ;  we  shall  think  of  motives  operative  only  in 
A  as  Y-motives,  those  operative  only  in  B  as  Z-motives, 
while  X,  the  qiicBsitum,  will  stand  for  the  (usually  small) 
range  of  motives  which  stir  his  deeper  emotions  during 
his  dream-moods,  and  yet  are  judged  by  his  waking  dis- 
crimination to  be  practical ;    and    which  are   therefore 


The  Fixing  of  Good  Habits        1 07 

able  to  stimulate  him  both  to  strenuous  effort  and  to 
steady  self-restraint.  Within  X  lies  the  true  centre  of 
gravity  of  the  individual's  heart  and  conscience ;  "  the 
soul  that  makes  him  one  from  first  to  last." 

Habits  formed  while  motives  X  are  present  to  the 
mind  are  unHkely  to  collapse  under  any  stress  and 
strain  of  life,  or  even  in  the  conditions  respectively 
known  as  "  absence  of  mind  "  and  as  "  temporary  in- 
sanity." 

It  must  be  observed  that  the  permanent  motive  is  not 
always  one  predominantly  present  to  consciousness.  It 
is  revealed  rather  by  the  quality  of  the  individual's 
interest  in  other  things  than  by  his  conscious  interest  in 
that  thing.  A  girl  may  seem  at  one  time  devoted  to 
music  or  some  art,  at  another  to  philosophy  or  litera- 
ture ;  but  always  under  the  dominant  influence  of  some 
teacher,  and  stimulated  by  his  approval.  The  desire  for 
human  approval  is  in  this  case  likely  to  be  a  more  per- 
manent motive  than  either  art  or  philosophy.  Or  a  girl 
may  be  absorbed  at  one  time  in  the  study  of  music ;  at 
another  time  of  history  or  literature ;  and  what  her  soul 
is  seeking  through  its  various  phases  may  be  the  Law  of 
rhythmic  beats  of  the  Unseen.  In  such  a  case,  the 
motive  which  may  be  relied  on  as  a  basis  for  ethical 
habit  is  the  belief  in  the  retaliations  brought  about  by 
the  recoil-power  of  destiny.  A  young  person  may  seem 
at  one  time  intensely  pious,  at  another  painfully  worldly  ; 
the  motive  all  through  may  be  an  artistic  sentiment, 
which  causes  the  imagination  to  be  fascinated,  at  one 
time  by  the  "  beauty  of  holiness,"  at  another  by  some 
artistic  quality  perceived  in  social  life  ;  the  power  to  trust 
to,  in  such  a  case,  is  neither  the  influence  of  the  Church 


io8  The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

nor  that  of  the  world,  but  the  desire  for  the  outward 
expression  of  harmonious  Law. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  we  are  treating  here  of 
the  choice  not  of  a  professional  career  for  the  future  man 
or  woman,  but  of  a  basis  for  the  formation  of  habits. 
The  bread-winning  profession  of  an  individual  should  be 
of  such  a  kind  that  he  can  be  interested  in  it,  but  can 
also  escape  entirely  from  the  thought  of  it  when  off  duty. 
The  basis  of  ethical  habit,  on  the  contrary,  should  be 
some  sentiment  from  which  the  individual  never  escapes ; 
which  is  about  his  path  and  about  his  bed ;  something 
for  the  sake  of  which  he  is  willing  to  work  and  the 
thought  of  which  makes  it  easy  to  rest ;  which  gives 
life  a  meaning,  and  robs  death  of  its  sting. 

In  no  cases,  perhaps,  can  the  subject  of  educational 
disappointment  be  studied  more  easily  or  with  more 
profit  than  in  those  of  little  girls  who  show  an  early 
taste  for  what  are  called  domestic  pursuits  :  needlework, 
dusting,  and  the  arrangement  of  the  table  or  the  room. 
Such  precocious  little  housewives  often  become,  in  later 
life,  the  most  hopelessly  and  helplessly  undomesticated 
women.  The  reason  of  the  failure  would  seem  to  be 
this : — The  mother  assumes  that  her  intelligent  little 
helper  has  "domesticated  tastes";  whereas  the  child's 
orderly  activity  is  probably  due  to  its  being,  at  a  very  early 
age,  the  only  outlet  for  some  nascent  passion,  either  the 
love  of  approval,  or  the  general  instinct  of  kindness,  or  the 
desire  to  help  whoever  is  greater  and  cleverer  than  her- 
self. A  little  girl  may  be  phenomenally  clever  at 
darning  father's  socks  as  long  as  father  is  the  dominant 
influence  of  her  life,  and  darning  socks  the  only  thing  she 
can  do  for  him.     If  she  finds  out  too  early  that  she  can 


The  Fixing  of  Good  Habits        1 09 

help  him,  or  some  indulgent  uncle,  by  copying  MSS.,  it 
is  much  to  be  feared  that  the  needle  will  prove  to  be  not 
her  true  vocation  after  all,  unless  special  pains  are  taken 
to  cultivate  the  taste  for  some  years.  As  soon  as  the 
child  goes  to  school,  domestic  work  finds  itself  perhaps 
in  violent  conflict  with  the  ruling  passion ;  and  the  taste 
for  it  crumbles  like  a  snapped  "  Rupert's  drop,"  never  to 
be  restored.  Domesticated  tastes,  in  a  woman,  are  the 
normal  result  of  household  work  having  been  an  outlet 
for  the  expression  of  the  X-motive  between  the  ages  of 
twelve  and  eighteen. 

The  question  naturally  occurs : — how  can  parents  and 
teachers  find  the  centre  of  gravity  of  a  young  life,  how 
discover  the  ultimately  dominant  motive  ?  Very  often 
they  cannot  do  so  ;  perhaps  it  is  not  best  to  probe  in 
the  matter  too  curiously.  The  important  thing  is  that 
they  should  realise  that  there  is  a  centre  of  gravity  to 
each  young  life ;  and  that  it  lies  in  the  region  where 
apparently  conflicting  passions  mutually  overlap.  They 
will  then  try  to  link  the  habits  most  important  to  form, 
not  with  the  passion  which  seems  strongest  at  any 
given  time  but  with  the  greatest  possible  variety  of 
motives,  in  the  hope  that  the  good  habit  will  link  itself 
with  the  quality  of  feeling,  whatever  that  may  be,  which 
underlies  all  the  various  apparent  motives. 

In  this  matter,  as  in  many  others,  the  fact  which  it 
is  most  important  for  us  to  know  is  that  of  our  own 
ignorance.  We  cannot  know  what  is  the  centre  of 
gravity  of  a  young  nature;  let  us  then  not  act  as  if 
we  knew.  We  know  only  that  it  lies  at  the  meeting- 
point  of  the  character's  extremes. 

The  power  in  which  we  must  put  our  trust  is  not 


1 1  o  The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

our  own  strength,  but  the  Force  which  is  given  off 
where  conflicting  elements  meet.  Our  Deliverer  is  not 
any  eidolon  which  we  have  fashioned  with  the  hands 
of  our  imagination,  but  the  Unity  who  reveals  Himself 
in  the  union  of  apparent  opposites. 


CHAPTER   XII 

CONSCIOUS  AND   UNCONSCIOUS   MIND 

No  one  as  yet  knows  exactly  how  conscious  and  un- 
conscious mental  action  are  related  to  each  other.  But 
it  will  assist  us  in  arranging  the  facts  we  do  know  if 
we  picture  consciousness  as  a  workshop,  built  over  a 
cavity,  a  sort  of  dark  cavern  or  cellar.  The  senses 
(eyes,  ears,  touch,  etc.)  are  passages  which  lead  out 
into  the  open  air.  Raw  material  is  brought  through 
these  passages  into  the  workshop  (consciousness),  and 
sent  through  it  into  the  cellar,  whence  it  can  be  fetched 
up  when  wanted.  This  fetching  up  from  the  cellar  of 
an  idea  lodged  there  beforehand  is  what  we  call  the 
act  of  memory  or  remembering. 

Besides  the  stairway  which  leads  from  the  above- 
ground  workshop  to  the  cellar,  there  are  other  slopes 
or  stairways  which  go  direct  from  the  sense-avenues 
to  the  cellar  without  passing  through  the  workshop.^ 

Individuals  differ  greatly  in  the  use  which  they  make 
of  the  two  sets  of  paths  between  the  cellar  and  the 
outside  world.  In  some,  nearly  all  material  passes 
into  memory  through  consciousness  ;  others  "  remember  " 
many  things  which  seem  never  to  have  passed  through 
consciousness  at  all  on  the  way  down  to  the  store-house. 

•  See  No.  9  of  the  Balance-table  in  Chapter  IX. 
Ill 


1 1 2  The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

The  same  difference  is  observable  in  the  relative  use 
of  the  two  sets  of  passages  for  passing  material  back. 

Almost  everyone  can  with  more  or  less  accuracy  and 
vividness  "  call  up  a  picture,"  or  sound,  or  scent,  or  taste, 
of  which  he  is,  at  the  moment,  consciously  thinking. 
In  that  case,  the  impression  has  come  up  from  the 
unconscious  mind  into  the  conscious  mind,  and  has 
then  passed  out  into  the  sense-perceptions  or  door- 
ways. But  in  some  persons  stored-up  impressions 
come  directly  up  the  other  stairs,  into  the  sense- 
passage,  and  thence  into  consciousness.  The  majority 
first  think  of  an  object  or  sound  or  scent  or  flavour, 
and  then  picture  or  "  imagine "  it ;  but  some  see  or 
hear  or  smell  or  taste  it  in  imagination,  and  only 
afterwards  consciously  think  of  it.  To  this  latter 
mode  of  perception  is  commonly  given  such  names  as 
clair-voyance,  clair-audience,  etc.  It  is  as  normal  and 
natural  and  healthy  as  the  other,  though  as  yet  less 
usual. 

Most  people  think  of  an  idea  and  then  write  it  down. 
To  some  it  comes  natural  to  write  first,  and  then  receive 
the  idea  into  consciousness  by  reading  it  in  their  own 
handwriting.  The  one  is  as  "  normal  "  as  the  other,  and, 
in  itself,  quite  as  healthy. 

To  information  brought  from  the  unconscious  mind 
to  the  conscious  through  the  channel  of  one's  own 
handwriting,  is  usually  given  the  somewhat  misleading 
title  "automatic  writing."  (Misleading,  because  all 
writing  which  is  done  without  conscious  effort  is 
automatic  in  itself;  whether  dictated  by  the  conscious 
or  the  unconscious  mind.) 

As    I    said,   one   mode   of  conveyance   between    the 


Conscious  and  Unconscious  Mind  1 1 3 

outer  sense  and  the  cavern  of  unconscious  mind  is  as 
normal  and  healthy  as  the  other  ;  each  has  its  function 
and  utility.  Only  it  is  found  important  to  distinguish 
sounds  or  sights  projected  up  from  the  cavern  below 
from  those  which  are  at  the  moment  entering  in  from 
the  outside.  And  this  is  very  easy  to  do  when  the 
cellar-produced  impressions  come  first  up  into  con- 
sciousness as  thoughts  and  thence  are  projected  on  to 
the  concrete  imagination.  A  little  more  training  is 
necessary  to  effect  the  distinction  in  the  case  of 
imaginary  impressions  which  come  first  as  sense  im- 
pressions and  only  afterwards  as  thoughts. 

But  the  fact  that  a  faculty  is  not  in  working  order  at 
birth,  that  it  needs  training  before  it  can  be  relied  on 
to  work  efficiently,  does  not  prove  either  that  the  faculty 
is  useless,  or  that  the  possession  of  it  is  a  symptom  of 
disease. 

Confusion  has  been  introduced  into  this  subject  by 
three  causes. 

First,  for  many  years  the  medical  profession  treated 
as  "  symptoms  of  insanity "  the  seeing  of  visions  and 
hearing  of  voices,  and  locked  up  in  lunatic  asylums  our 
best  specimens. 

Second,  because  clairvoyance  and  clairaudience  have 
been  considered  as  symptoms  of  insanity,  those  to 
whom  they  occur  become  frightened.  Instead  of  taking 
the  thing  naturally  and  quietly  as  a  faculty  to  be  used, 
the  relatives  of  the  person  affected  treat  it  quite  wrongly  ; 
making  the  same  kind  of  mistakes  as  would  be  made  if 
one  treated  the  opening  of  a  kitten's  eyes,  or  any  other 
normal  product  of  evolution,  as  a  symptom  of  disease 
which  must  be  got  rid  of     In  some  cases,  indeed,  the 

8 


1 14  The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

patient  really  goes  mad  of  sheer  terror  because  he  thinks 
he  must  be  going  mad. 

Third,  clairvoyants  and  clairaudients  are  often  well 
aware  that  their  peculiar  sense-impressions  are  con- 
comitants of  inspiration.  This  is,  so  far,  perfectly 
correct.  All  people  are  more  or  less  inspired  at  times, 
and  if  a  person  is  so  constituted  as  to  be  subject  to 
these  so-called  hallucinations,  it  is  during  the  inspired 
moments  that  they  occur.  But  it  does  not  in  the  least 
follow  that  those  to  whom  they  occur  are  more  inspired, 
or  more  truly  inspired,  than  anybody  else.  The  same 
kind  of  organisation  which  makes  a  person  clairvoyant 
or  clairaudient  makes  him  also  conscious  when  inspira- 
tion is  going  on.  The  two  things — clairvoyant  impres- 
sion and  the  sensuous  consciousness  of  the  fact  of  being 
inspired — come  to  the  same  kind  of  person  and  in  the 
same  physical  condition.  But  inspiration  itself  comes 
just  as  strongly  and  as  truly  to  the  same  person  in 
other  states,  and  to  people  who  are  never  clairvoyant 
at  all.  The  visions  or  voices  are  no  test  or  measure 
either  of  the  intensity,  the  accuracy,  or  the  value  of  the 
inspiration.  They  prove  that  inspiration  is  going  on. 
The  absence  of  them  does  not  prove  it  is  not  going  on. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

HYPERESTHESIA  ;   ADUMBRATIONS  ;   HALLUCINA- 
TIONS;   HYSTERIA 

There  is  a  condition  known  as  hyperaesthesia,  in  which 
some  of  the  senses  or  faculties  become  abnormally 
acute ;  one  sees  objects  clearly  in  very  faint  light,  or 
hears  slight  sounds  at  incredibly  long  distances  ;  while 
quite  ordinary  amounts  of  light  or  noise  may  be  dis- 
tressing. Or  the  mind  may  become  especially  acute  in 
grasping  certain  kinds  of  ideas,  which  strike  one  with 
painful  force.  In  this  condition  mistaken  impressions 
and  false  ideas  are  peculiarly  liable  to  register  them- 
selves and  become  part  of  the  permanent  furniture  of 
the  brain.  It  is  well,  therefore,  to  hold  oneself  with 
special  care  as  near  as  may  be  to  the  Spirit  of  Truth 
whenever  the  senses  or  intellect  seem  phenomenally 
acute. 

Either  hyperaesthesia  or  the  opposite  condition,  the 
benumbing  of  certain  faculties,  may  result  from  excessive 
magnetisation  by  some  other  person,  who  may  (or  may 
not)  be  wholly  unconscious  of  the  influence  which  he  is 
exerting.  The  remedy  is  easy  and  almost  certainly 
efficacious  if  administered  under  suitable  conditions. 
The  person  in  whom  the  anomalous  symptoms  have 
been  observed  should  make  himself,  or  be  made,  the 
"5 


1 1 6  The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

reconciling  point  of  hostile  forces.  He  should  be 
subjected  to  the  influence  of  someone  whom  the  source 
of  the  mischief  either  despises  and  is  despised  by,  or 
hates  and  is  hated  by,  or  has  wronged  and  feels  wronged 
by.  This  should  be  done,  if  possible,  by  mutual  consent 
of  the  conflicting  parties,  as  a  remedial  measure  indicated 
by  the  course  of  events.  The  patient's  suffering  should 
be  treated  as  a  token  from  The  Unseen  Powers,  not 
that  the  mutual  hostility  of  the  parties  was  wrong  or 
was  needless  from  the  first,  but  that  the  time  has  come 
for  it  to  cease. 

Children  who  are  subject  to  hyperaesthesia  in  any 
form,  or  susceptible  of  over-magnetisation,  should  never 
be  stimulated  to  continuous  intellectual  exertion  in  any 
one  direction.  They  are  the  born  reconcilers  and 
harmonisers  of  the  world  :  their  function  is  to  reveal 
to  each  other  opposing  modes  of  consciousness.  At 
school  they  should  have  easier  intellectual  work  than  is 
found  suitable  for  average  children  of  their  age  and 
apparent  capability;  they  should  be  made  responsible 
for  the  lessons  being  understood  by  the  stupidest  and 
most  backward  in  the  class  ;  and  be  allowed  also  to 
point  out  to  the  teacher  where  the  stupid  ones  have 
failed  to  grasp  his  meaning.  Such  of  them  as  take  up 
literature  as  a  profession  should  begin  their  career  as 
translators  and  critics,  and  not  offer  their  own  ideas  to 
the  world  till  they  have  considerable  experience  in 
making  some  section  of  the  public  understand  work 
primarily  written  for,  and  more  immediately  intelligible 
to,  some  other  section.  They  should  never  be  expected 
or  encouraged  to  join  any  party  in  religion  or  politics. 
That   fidelity  to  party,  that  esprit  de  corps,  which  for 


Hyperaesthesia  1 1 7 

average  men  is  a  virtue,  inasmuch  as  it  counteracts 
selfish  vagaries  and  impulses,  and  keeps  alive  the  ideal 
of  fidelity,  is,  for  such  sensitives  as  I  am  describing,  a 
vice,  in  that  it  breeds  disease  of  the  brain  and  nerve- 
tissues,  and  prepares  the  way  for  all  kinds  of  hypocrisies, 
distortions,  and  vicious  desires. 

These  sensitives  are,  properly  speaking,  "  mediums  "  in 
the  fullest  sense  of  that  word,  interpreters  and  mediators 
by  nature.  But  they  need  long  and  severe  training 
before  they  are  fit  to  translate  into  human  speech  the 
notations  used  by  the  Unseen  Powers.  And  the  training 
should  consist,  not  in  premature  boasting  of  their 
personal  intercourse  with  those  Mighty  Ones  who  have 
"  gone  before,"  and  who  now  "  rule  us  from  their  graves," 
but  in  humble  and  reverent  expositions  of  the  meaning 
of  masters  who  are  visibly  present  to  correct  them  if 
they  speak  rashly,  and  of  documents  which  can  be 
consulted  at  first  hand  by  whoever  doubts  the  accuracy 
of  the  medium's  interpretation. 

That  seems  to  have  been  the  meaning  of  what  were 
called  in  Bible  times  "  Schools  of  the  Prophets."  The 
younger  prophet  was  trained  by  carrying  messages  from 
the  older  prophet  to  the  people  ;  and  not  until  he  could 
give  a  message  accura.te\y  from  his  human  master  to  a 
stupid  king,  or  a  noisy  rabble,  without  distorting  it,  was 
he  allowed  to  speak  as  an  authorised  messenger  from 
God. 

An  analogous  principle  to  that  indicated  above,  the 
necessity  for  training  hyperaesthetic  sensitives,  from  the 
first,  as  interpreters,  is  the  following.  It  is  dangerous 
to  educate  boys  and  girls  apart  from  each  other  ;  but 
doubtfully  wise  to  educate  them  together  without  the 


1 1 8  The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

normal  safeguard  of  purity  and  honour,  which  consists, 
not  in  incessant  spying  by  adults,  but  in  making  each 
sex  responsible,  to  some  extent,  for  the  other ;  the  boys 
for  the  physical  safety  and  intellectual  thoroughness  of 
the  girls;  the  girls  for  the  physical  comfort  and  moral 
and  artistic  refinement  of  the  boys. 

In  all  this  question  of  personal  influence,  we  should 
never  lose  sight  of  the  great  principle  so  lucidly  ex- 
plained by  E.  Ray  Lankester  in  the  Quarterly  Review  of 
July  1904,  viz.: — that  two  races  or  individuals  may,  by 
merely  coming  into  contact  without  the  appropriate 
precautions,  generate  some  contagious  disease  of  which 
neither  showed  any  symptom  while  they  kept  apart. 
One  may  have  been  long  generating  the  virus  or  other 
potential  cause  of  disease,  but  have  been  at  the  same 
time  growing,  pari  passu,  immune  to  its  action ;  the 
other  may  be  free  from  the  virus  and  lack  the  immunity. 
When  they  come  into  contact,  the  virus  may  pass  from 
the  one  which  is  immune  to  the  one  which  is  not  so, 
and  generate  some  horrible  and  unmanageable  disease, 
either  physical  or  mental.  Never,  therefore,  allow  your- 
self to  think  of  a  race-hatred,  a  race-shudder,  a  sense  of 
unaccountable  unreasoning  aversion,  as  a  pre-judice ;  it 
is  far  more  likely  to  be  a  pre-monition,  a  warning  from 
the  Unseen  to  avoid  some  grave  danger.  But  the  pre- 
monition comes  from  the  Unseen,  the  As-Yet-Unknown  ; 
and  the  shadow  which  it  casts  before  may  be  very 
unlike  the  reality.  Do  not  allow  it  to  fix  itself  in  your 
mind  in  its  present  shape,  and  become  a  pre-judice  (a 
judgment  without  knowledge).  Say  to  yourself,  not : — 
"  I  hate  this  man  because  he  is  a  Jew  " ;  or  "  I  despise 
this  man  because  he  is  a  Kaffir  "  :  or  "  All  Orientals  are 


Adumbrations  1 1 9 

sly "  ;  or  "  All  the  yellow  races  are  untrustworthy "  ; 
but  "  The  Unseen  is  warning  me  that  this  man  holds, 
for  the  present,  some  danger  for  me."  Act  like  the 
wary  animal  who  hears  in  the  forest  some  unfamiliar 
sound.  Keep  your  eyes  and  mind  open  and  your 
tongue  silent,  and  wait  to  see  what  the  Unknown  is 
sending. 

Coming  revelation  casts  its  shadow  before.  When 
there  is  any  stir  in  the  region  whence  man  receives 
inspirations,  or  when  the  minds  of  powerful  thinkers  are 
pondering  over  some  problem  as  yet  unsolved,  sensitive 
brains  are  prone  to  see  visions  and  dream  dreams. 
Lack  of  understanding  on  this  point  gives  rise  to  many 
of  the  manias  recognised  as  such  by  the  medical  and 
legal  authorities,  as  well  as  to  many  tragedies  which 
pass  outside  of  lunatic  asylums  and  which  tend  rather 
to  enrich  the  literature  of  romance  than  to  foster  man's 
control  over  himself  and  the  world  around  him. 

When  the  shadow  of  on-coming  revelation  falls  on 
the  intellectual  plane,  it  commonly  produces  delusions  of 
many  kinds  ;  when  it  falls  on  the  emotional  plane  it 
produces  various  kinds  of  sentimental  aberrations,  of 
which  we  will  speak  presently.  We  will  touch  first  on 
the  intellectual  delusions. 

On-coming  revelation  uses  all  kinds  of  faculties  as 
screens  on  which  to  project  its  varied  shadows  ;  and 
these  are  usually  either  inverted  or  distorted,  or  both. 
If  the  condition  of  underground  passages  described  in 
Chapter  XII.  exists,  the  invert  shadow  projects  itself  as 
clairvoyance  or  clairaudience.  To  take  the  vision  or 
voices  as  in  themselves  true  representations  of  truth  is 
superstitious  and  foolish  ;  but  to  dismiss  them  as  worth- 


1 20  The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

less  and  incapable  of  assisting  revelation  is  worse. 
Each  is  a  shadow;  by  comparing  the  various  shadows 
we  arrive  at  last  at  grasping  the  meaning  of  the 
revelation. 

A  fertile  source  of  error  in  interpreting  revelation  is 
to  treat  words  written  automatically,  or  spoken  in  trance, 
as  if  they  belonged  to  the  domain  of  language  ;  whereas 
in  reality  such  utterances  are  more  commonly  mere 
indications  of  a  Notation,  and  should  be  interpreted  as 
such.  If  a  naturalist  wrote  of  a  certain  bird  that  it 
whistled  c,  a,  b,  those  would  be  much  misled  who  insisted 
that  he  had  described  the  bird  as  whistling  for  a  cab ; 
but  not  more  so  than  many  who  report  on  the  utterances 
of  trance-mediums  or  who  publish  automatic  writings. 
An  instance  will  perhaps  make  clearer  what  is  here 
meant  than  any  theoretical  explanation. 

A  "  medium  "  sometimes  declares  that  some  person  is 
"  illegitimate,"  or  a  "  bastard,"  or  that  his  parents  were 
"  not  truly  married."  When  this  is  treated  as  language 
it  may  give  rise  to  scandals.  The  great  Powers  of 
Revelation  do  not  gossip  with  men,  in  earth-phraseology, 
taking  seriously  our  parchment  documents  and  registry- 
office  ceremonials  !  They  use  the  ceremonials  to  bring 
to  our  minds  facts  in  the  great  Notation  of  Sex  which 
they  have  used  in  all  ages  as  the  type  of  the  psychologic 
life.  In  that  notation,  two  persons  are  treated  as  "  not 
truly  married  "  who  have  come  together  in  a  wrong  frame 
of  mind  for  fulfilling  the  best  purposes  of  marriage.  A 
"  bastard  "  child  is  one  whose  parents  did  not  so  conduct 
their  union  as  to  secure  to  him  a  full  share  of  such 
physical,  intellectual,  and  spiritual  vitality  as  they  may 
have  possessed. 


/ 


Adumbrations  1 2 1 

In  general  terms  it  may  be  said  that  any  words  or 
visible  images  which  occur  in  a  supposed  communication 
from  The  Unseen  should  be  treated  not  as  conveying 
any  message  but  as  giving  an  indication  of  the  notation 
in  which  the  message  is  to  be  conveyed. 

Adumbrations  come  in  dreams.  "  The  brain  of  man 
functions  normally  towards  Monism " ;  whenever  its 
discriminating  faculties  are  not  fully  active,  it  puts 
together  in  new  combinations  impressions  received 
separately.  These  combinations  are  stored  in  the 
unconscious  mind  and  become  part  of  its  available 
material.  In  sleep,  this  whole  process  should  go  on 
outside  of  consciousness,  or  at  least  leave  no  trace  on 
the  memory.  But  if  the  sleep  is  not  complete  we 
remember  some  part  of  the  process  and  call  it  a  "  dream." 

If  the  brain  is  in  training,  and  functioning  perfectly, 
it  puts  elements  together  in  their  true  relations  ;  and  the 
dream,  if  dream  occurs,  constitutes  a  direct  revelation. 
But  if  the  functioning  is  not  perfect,  various  elements  of 
thought  are  flung  together  without  organisation,  without 
regard  to  their  true  relation  to  each  other.  The  dream 
is  then  only  indirectly  a  revelation  ;  it  reveals,  not  truth, 
but  the  precise  manner  in  which  the  brain  is,  at  the 
moment,  inclined  to  err.  If  one  dreams  of  finding  gold 
or  jewels,  the  dream  m2.y  possibly  be  the  reflection,  on  a 
normally  working  brain,  of  knowledge,  residing  in  some 
other  personality,  of  the  real  whereabouts  of  the  treasure. 
But  it  is  more  probably  something  far  more  valuable, 
i.e.  a  revelation  to  oneself,  for  one's  own  self-guidance,  of 
the  precise  manner  in  which  one's  brain  is,  at  the  time, 
inclined  to  work  abnormally.  If  one  dreams  of  finding 
jewels  in  some  place  where  they  are  not  to  be  found, 


122  The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

one  should  recognise  that  one's  brain  is,  for  the  present, 
functioning  abnormally  towards  easy  optimism,  and,  for 
some  days  to  come  at  least,  discount  all  optimistic 
opinions  one  may  be  led  to  form,  about  money,  business, 
or  anything  else.  On  the  other  hand,  if  one  dreams  of 
misfortune  which  is  of  impossible  kind  or  which  fails  to 
occur,  one  should  discount  pessimistic  apprehensions. 
This  is  the  meaning  of  the  old  saying  that  dreams  "  go 
by  contraries,"  i.e.  should  be  interpreted  as  warnings  of 
the  direction  in  which  one  should  not  go  except  with 
great  caution. 

When  the  time  has  nearly  come  for  some  new  method 
in  abstract  science,  mathematics,  or  logic,  an  adumbra- 
tion of  it  may  fall  on  the  brain  of  some  sensitive,  in  the 
shape  of  a  mechanical  device.  He  may  see  in  the  air 
before  him,  as  it  were,  as  Macbeth  saw  the  dagger,  a  new 
piece  of  mechanism,  or  a  modification  of  some  existing 
machine.  If  he  had  been  trained  in  accordance  with 
the  suggestions  of  Chapter  XI.  it  would  not  occur  to  him 
that  he  had  any  duty  or  function  in  regard  to  the  vision, 
except  to  study  it,  till  his  discriminating  faculties  were 
once  more  in  full  activity.  And  when  he  found  himself 
once  more  in  phase  A,  he  would  look  about  the  world 
around  him,  to  see  whether  it  needed,  required,  or  wished 
for,  the  materialisation  of  his  vision.  It  may  be  that 
some  external  need  really  does  exist  for  the  materialised 
embodiment  of  the  thought-process  which,  as  such,  the 
world  is  not  yet  ready  to  understand.  If  so,  the  mortal 
who  has  seen  a  revelation  in  vision,  and  carried  it  out  in 
objective  fact,  becomes  a  real  inventor  and  possibly  a 
prosperous  individual  as  well  as  a  benefactor  to  the 
human  race.     But  in  many  cases  there  happens  to  exist 


Adumbrations  1 2  3 

no  external  use  for  the  materialising  of  the  vision.  If 
the  possessor  of  the  sensitive  brain  in  which  it  took 
shape  is  ignorant  and  untrained  enough  to  suppose  that, 
because  he  saw  a  thing  in  the  air,  he  has  a  divine  com- 
mission to  project  it  in  iron  or  stone,  he  may  waste  his 
life  and  his  money — and  perhaps  other  people's  lives  and 
money  as  well — on  a  gigantic  invention,  or  on  a  suc- 
cession of  small  inventions,  of  no  practical  use  to  any 
one.  Much  waste  of  life  and  energy  will  be  spared  when 
it  is  understood  that,  in  such  cases,  divine  commission 
is  to  be  inferred  with  certainty  only  at  the  point  where 
inspiration  from  within  meets  some  call  or  need  from 
without.  If  no  such  need  is  perceptible,  the  seer  of  the 
vision  may  legitimately  materialise  it  in  "  play,"  i.e.  on  a 
small  scale,  expending  on  it  only  his  leisure  time  and 
spare  cash.  To  do  this  will  probably  assist  him  in 
interpreting  the  utterance  of  the  divine  voice  within, 
which  as  yet  he  only  imperfectly  apprehends.  But  he 
should  take  no  step,  in  consequence  of  the  vision,  which 
seriously  commits  or  hampers  the  lives  of  others,  or  even 
his  own.  If  this  be  clearly  recognised  we  shall  be  in  a 
better  position  for  understanding  how  to  deal  with  the 
other  class  of  shadows,  i.e.  those  which  fall  on  the 
emotional  faculties  and  create  sentimental  disturbance. 
Two  persons  may  have  something  in  common  as  to 
which  they  can  supplement  each  other,  so  that  by  com- 
bining for  a  time  their  two  sets  of  faculty,  or  two  stores 
of  knowledge,  they  will  be  able  to  carry  into  effect  some 
work  which  would  not  be  done  if  they  remained  apart. 
Sensitives  often  feel  an  adumbration  of  this,  in  the  shape 
of  a  strong  personal  attraction,  which,  if  restrained,  may 
take  on  the  form  of  a  real  nostalgia ;   a  feeling  as   if 


1 24  The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

water  would  not  quench  thirst  unless  taken  from  that 
person's  hand  ;  as  if  rest  were  unattainable  except  by 
that  person's  side. 

The  trained  seer  knows  that  all  this  is  adumbration 
of  some  future  mutual  fertilisation  between  the  two ; 
and,  true  to  the  habit  of  not  taking  action  on  any 
emotion  or  sensation  of  phase  B  till  it  has  been  passed 
in  review  in  phase  A,  postpones  the  indulgence  of  the 
new  desire  till  the  anomalous  intensity  of  it  has  com- 
pletely passed  off  and  the  mind  has  proved  itself 
thoroughly  awake  once  more  by  a  renewed  capability  of 
taking  an  interest  in  ordinary  life.  But  an  untrained 
sensitive  too  often  takes  action  on  the  adumbration  while 
it  is  still  overshadowing  the  judgment ;  while  he  is  in- 
capable of  discerning  what  manner  of  substance  is  casting 
the  strange  shadow.  Two  men  may  set  up  in  business 
together  who  would  be  more  useful  as  correspondents 
than  as  partners.  Or  two  women  may  break  off  their 
respective  home  ties  in  order  to  set  up  house  together, 
and  presently  "  get  on  each  other's  nerves  " ;  because  the 
relation  of  daily  intercourse  over  trivial  household  detail 
is  unfavourable  to  the  doing  of  the  real  task  which  was 
being  set  to  them.  Probably  the  most  disastrous  mis- 
take that  is  made  in  connection  with  the  attraction  of 
adumbration  is  when  it  occurs  between  persons  of 
different  sexes,  at  an  age  when  sex-passion  is  strong. 
They  imagine  themselves  "  in  love  "  with  each  other. 
They  may  be  unsuited,  either  to  live  in  common,  to 
beget  healthy  children  by  each  other,  or  to  generate  a 
harmonious  atmosphere  in  which  to  bring  up  children  ; 
and  marriage  between  them  may  be  in  every  way 
disastrous.     On  the  other  hand,  it  sometimes  happens 


Hallucinations  1 2  5 

that  the  young  people  themselves,  or  their  friends  for 
them,  have  wisdom  to  "  wait  and  see  whether  the  fancy 
passes  off"  before  committing  themselves  irretrievably. 
In  this  case  they  too  often  allow  themselves  to  drift 
permanently  apart ;  lose  the  benefit  of  the  adumbration 
as  prophecy,  and  fail  to  accomplish  what  they  might 
have  done  by  a  sober  union  of  their  diverse  mental 
powers. 

Many  of  us  spend  our  lives  in  alternately  lamenting 
our  poverty  and  grumbling  at  the  quantity  of  rough 
gravel  under  our  feet ;  while  we  omit  to  notice  that  the 
gravel  is  rich  auriferous  quartz.  If,  instead  of  trampling 
it  under  foot,  we  picked  it  up,  we  might  soon  be  rolling 
in  well-hung  carriages  and  able  to  go  along  a  gravelled 
road  in  luxurious  ease. 

When  I  have  shown  my  class  a  diagram,  and  think 
they  have  looked  at  it  long  enough,  I  wipe  the  board 
black  in  readiness  for  the  next  thing  I  wish  to  write. 
I  expect  the  class  to  accept  the  passing  away  of  that 
which  has  served  its  purpose ;  to  face  the  blackness 
and  blankness  quietly  ;  and  to  sit  still  and  listen  to 
what  I  may  be  telling  them,  till  I  have  occasion  to 
write  something  fresh.  As  I  am  only  a  limited,  fallible 
human  teacher,  the  class  always  does  show  me  that 
much  respect.  When  God  wipes  something  off  His 
blackboard,  some  of  His  class  drown  His  voice  by 
howling  and  screaming  hysterically,  about  the  loss  of 
that  which  was  so  precious  ;  and  the  rest  jump  up  and 
scribble  something  out  of  their  own  heads,  in  order  not 
to  see  the  blankness.  If  my  class  behaved  as  God's  class 
does,  what  should  I  do  ?  Not,  I  hope,  lose  my  temper 
and  my  self-respect ;    not  curse  them  or  burn  them  or 


126  The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

inflict  vengeful  penalties.  I  think  I  should  put  my 
chalk  down  on  the  table  and  say: — "I  can  teach  you 
nothing  in  this  turmoil  ;  when  you  have  done  making  a 
noise  and  are  ready  to  listen,  I  will  try  to  tell  you  some- 
thing." 

But  neither  I  nor  anyone  could  put  the  pupils  back 
into  the  condition  which  they  would  have  been  in  had 
they  been  quiet  from  the  beginning.  They  may  gain 
other  wisdom  from  repentance  and  correction  of  their 
folly ;  but  they  can  no  longer  learn  exactly  what  they 
would  have  learned  had  they  not  been  guilty  of  it. 

Face  illusions,  hallucinations,  and  nervous  terrors 
boldly ;  and  dare  to  let  yourself  know  how  they  arose. 
You  may  not  be  able  to  conquer  them ;  but  there  always 
was  a  time  in  the  history  of  each  when  you  would  have 
been  able  to  conquer  it.  Be  wise  now  ;  do  not  let  it 
conquer  you;  but  sit  still  now  and  learn  what  you 
can  from  treating  it  as  the  consequence  of  some  former 
mistake  of  yours. 

Nearly  half  a  century  ago,  I  woke  one  night  screaming 
in  terror.  I  had  dreamed  of  a  grey  fiend,  who  had  my 
dear  dead  father's  features,  but  with  a  horrible  expression 
on  the  face,  and  horns  above  it.  His  hands,  ending  in 
claws,  were  clutching  at  my  hair ;  and  he  was  trying  to 
drag  me  by  it  into  hell.  I  saw  his  face  and  felt  his 
clutch  after  I  woke,  and  was,  for  some  time,  powerless 
to  banish  them.  At  times  I  see  and  feel  them  still.  But  I 
could,  and  did,  and  do,  recognise  the  origin  of  the  demon, 
and  know  him  for  what  he  is : — the  child  of  my  own 
folly  and  cruelty. 

My  father  lived  in  an  atmosphere  of  medical  reform 
and  had  a  strong  feeling  against  certain  kinds  of  medical 


Hysteria  1 27 

practice  in  vogue  in  his  day.  I  had  once  heard  a  doctor 
recommending  for  me  a  certain  mode  of  treatment, 
insisting  that  it  was  harmless  and  answered  well.  To 
cut  short  the  discussion  father  said,  speaking  metaphori- 
cally : — "  It  may  answer  for  other  people  ;  it  could  not 
for  my  child  ;  Hahnemann  would  rise  from  his  grave  to 
prevent  it."  Years  afterwards,  when  my  husband  wished 
to  send  for  an  ordinary  doctor  to  perform  some  little 
operation,  I  involuntarily  cried  out : — "  Father  would  rise 
from  his  grave  to  prevent  it,"  meaning  at  first  only  to  speak 
in  metaphor.  But  then,  the  spirit  of  dishonest  self-will 
entered  into  me.  and  I  repeated  the  sentence  pretending 
to  believe  what  I  was  saying.  My  husband,  deceived  by 
my  air  of  conviction,  feared  to  oppose  me  lest  he  should 
bring  on  delirium,  and  so  desisted  from  his  intention. 
In  my  sleep,  the  marvellous  mechanism  of  the  un- 
conscious mind  transmuted  the  falsehood  by  which  I  had 
deceived  my  husband  into  a  fiend  which  for  a  moment 
deceived  myself,  and  which  retained  power  to  haunt  me 
after  I  had  detected  his  non-reality.  While  I  keep  this 
material  brain,  I  cannot  quite  dislodge  the  fiend  or  be 
quite  the  same  as  I  should  have  been  had  I  never 
generated  him.  But  I  can  be,  and  I  hope  am,  a  wiser 
woman  for  each  of  his  visits.  Every  time  he  comes,  he 
pays  toll.  The  supreme  folly  would  be  to  let  him  come 
and  go,  and  leave  no  blessing  behind  him. 

We  now  come  to  the  subject  of  hysteria. 

No  fixed  monomania,  etc.,  is  hysteria  proper.  All  that 
is  here  said  must  be  taken  to  refer  to  cases  of  polar- 
opposite  phases.  The  lines  of  cleavage  may  run  in  any 
direction.  There  may  be  cleavage  between  very 
reasonable  and    very  unreasonable    moods ;  alternation 


128  The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

between  melancholy  and  great  cheerfulness  ;  between 
temper  or  impertinence  and  a  desire  to  express  contri- 
tion for  the  ill-tempered  or  impertinent  speeches  or  acts; 
between  conceited  impertinence  to  a  teacher,  and  abject 
humility  to,  or  slavish  hero-worship  of,  that  teacher. 

In  all  cases  of  polarity,  one  phase  should  be  selected 
as  the  handle  for  curing  the  disease  by  the  method  of 
using  the  selected  phase  to  put  pressure  on  the  other. 
The  uninstructed  nurse  or  caretaker  very  commonly 
selects  the  wrong  phase,  the  one  which  she  ought  to 
leave  alone,  and  neglects  the  phase  which  she  ought  to 
get  hold  of  and  educate. 

Do  not  argue  against  the  dicta  of  the  unreasonable 
phase ;  but  educate  the  patient,  Jane,  in  her  reasonable 
phase,  to  turn  her  attention  on  to  the  doings  of  Jane  in 
the  unreasonable  phase ;  to  issue  her  orders  for  the 
conduct  of  unreasonable  Jane.  Be  a  mere  mechanical 
outside  implement  of  reasonable  Jane  to  coerce  un- 
reasonable Jane  into  obeying  her  true  master,  i.e. 
reasonable  Jane. 

In  case  of  melancholy  and  cheerful  phases,  do  not  try 
to  cheer  melancholy  Polly ;  still  less  reprove  her  for 
being  melancholy.  Let  alone  melancholy  Polly.  But 
when  cheerful  Polly  wants  to  chatter  and  sing,  etc.,  get 
her  to  be  quiet  and  occupy  her  time  in  meditation  on 
the  pleasantness  and  beauty  and  goodness  of  things  and 
people  ;  in  storing  up,  in  her  unconscious  brain,  mind- 
pictures  which  may  crop  up  and  divert  and  cheer 
melancholy  Polly.  (You  will  not  use  words  to  Polly  about 
unconscious  cerebration,  etc. ;  but  see  that  she  does  the 
thing  : — check  the  great  pouring  off  of  the  cheerfulness.) 

In  alternations  of  conceit  and  over-humility,  do  not 


Hysteria  129 

snub  the  conceited  Ethel.  But  say  to  the  humble  Ethel: — 
"  If  you  really  think  I  know  so  much  better  than  you  do, 
then  take  my  advice  noiv.  Don't  waste  words  praising 
me.  Say  nothing  about  me.  Go  and  sit  still  and  think 
steadily  about  what  a  wrong  thing  it  is  not  to  take  my 
advice  v^\\q.x\  you  don't  happen  to  feel,  for  the  moment,  so 
respectful  towards  me." 

In  case  of  alternate  ill-temper  and  contrition,  allow  the 
ill-temper  full  swing  (so  far  as  may  be  consistent  with 
the  safety  and  comfort  of  others).  Do  not  moral-lecture 
about  the  temper  itself.  But  say  to  the  contrite  Maggie: 
—  "  What  you  really  did  wrong  was:  to  disturb  others  by 
expressing  your  mood ;  to  indulge  your  temporary 
mood  by  forcing  notice  of  it  on  other  people.  It  is  just 
as  wrong  to  do  that  about  your  contrite  mood  as  about 
your  angry  one.  If  you  are  really  sorry  for  what  you 
did  wrong,  don't  do  the  same  wrong  now  this  minute. 
I  am  busy  ;  my  work  and  my  repose  were  interfered 
with  by  your  self-expression.  Show  you  are  sorry  by 
consenting  not  to  talk  of  your  present  feelings  Go 
away  and  think,  now,  how  wrong  it  is  to  insist  on  show- 
ing people  just  what  you  feel  at  the  moment."  In  case 
there  is  any  person  to  whom  apology  ought  to  be  made, 
you  can  add  : — "  I  will  find  an  opportunity  for  you  to 
make  the  apology,  this  evening  "  (or  to-morrow  or  next 
week,  as  the  case  may  be).  Take  care  that  the  apology 
is  not  made  under  the  strong  impulse  to  do  so,  not  while 
making  it  is  a  relief,  not  till  making  it  is  a  slight 
effort. 

The  polar-phases  of  hysteria  are  in  some  cases  periodic  ; 
in  others,  are  determined  by  accidents  of  food,  air,  etc., 
etc.     In  others,  again,  by  the  mental  influences  from  the 

9 


130  The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

outside.  But  however  the  time  is  determined,  the 
Eternal  Fact  is  that  the  reasonable,  or  cheerful,  or  contrite, 
or  humble  phase  is  one  of  receptivity  of  the  "  Cosmic 
Force,"  "  Holy  Ghost,""  Divine  Magnetism"  (people  use 
one  or  other  of  these  expressions,  according  to  their 
modes  of  belief,  but  I  am  speaking  now  only  of  the  force 
as  a  force).  The  other  phase,  in  each  disease,  is  the 
slack-time,  the  ebb-tide,  of  receptivity. 

The  whole  hygiene  of  the  matter  depends  on  seeing 
that  the  patient  does  not  expend  the  force  outwardly  dur- 
ing the  time  of  reception  ;  but  stores  it  up  in  her  tissues, 
to  be  used  later. 

The  specific  treatment  for  hysteria  consists  in  teaching 
the  organisation,  not  only  to  store  up  force  in  a  general 
neutral  way,  but  to  pitch  it  on  to  the  cure  of  the  specific 
disease  under  treatment.  The  main  difficulty  of  teach- 
ing all  this  consists  in  the  fact  that  people  object  to 
thinking  of  the  Holy  Ghost  as  a  calculable,  manageable 
Force.  The  Holy  Ghost,  before  it  touches  a  human 
nerve-system,  is  "  God  "  (at  least  you  and  I  think  so). 
But  so  much  Holy  Ghost  as  has  been  discharged  on  to 
human  brain-tissue,  is,  henceforth.  Force  ;  to  be  disposed 
of  as  medical  experience  and  wisdom  direct.  We  have 
an  algebra  of  its  mode  of  action,  as  precise  as  that  of 
electricity  (though,  fortunately,  far  simpler).  It  is  all 
very  well  when  we  have  done  a  week's  work  and  need 
re-laxation,  to  sing  hymns  in  church  about  Divine 
Persons  and  our  own  emotions — if  we  find  it  refreshes 
us.  But  in  working  hours  our  business  with  God 
Almighty  is  to  use  Him  for  healing  the  sick,  cleansing 
the  lepers,  and  (especially)  casting  out  the  devil.  Surely 
no  reasonable   Deity   cares    for  that   form   of  homage 


Hysteria  1 3 1 

which  consists  in  flinging  back  in  His  face  that  divine 
gift,  the  algebra  of  the  healing  force,  under  the  pretext 
that  He  is  too  sentimental  to  care  for  the  Laws  by  which 
He  acts  (and  which  He  forces  us  to  act  by  or  else  suffer 
under). 

"  Oh !  how  love  I  Thy  Law ;  all  the  day  long  is  my 
study  in  it !  " 


CHAPTER  XIV 

MOBILITY  AND   DECISION 

What  is  the  ultimate  desideratum  in  education  ?  That 
the  consciousness  of  the  educated  person  should  vibrate 
spontaneously  in  response  to  Nature's  rhythmic  motions. 

But  are  we  all  to  be,  as  to  our  thought-life,  mere  free- 
thinkers;  all  alike,  able  to  sway  in  any  direction? 
Surely  that  would  be  as  monotonous,  as  far  out  of  line 
with  Nature's  plan  of  organised,  correlated  differentiation, 
as  anything  well  could  be.  One  equipoised  Logan  is 
interesting,  as  a  type  and  as  a  symbol ;  but  it  is  only  a 
type-symbol,  not  a  general  fact. 

Hardly  any  individual  could,  even  if  he  would,  become 

an  unprejudiced  thinker  in  all  directions.     Or  I  would 

rather  say,  it  is  not  given  to  most  of  us  to  be,  in  any 

true  sense,  thinkers,  on  all   topics.      The   existence   of 

what  we  call  prejudice  is  due,  not  to  this  limitation, 

which  is  in  itself  normal,  but  to  the  fact  that  we  ignore 

our  limitations ;  we  try  to  do  that  which  we  are  unfitted 

to  do,  and  we  therefore  do  it  badly.     Each  of  us  has 

some  one  or  more  points  at  which  his  elasticity  has  been 

destroyed  by  something  that  happened  either  before  or 

after    his    birth ;    some    point   at    which    his   mind   is 

"  biassed,"  i.e.  feels  the  force  of  arguments  on  one  side 

and  not  on  the  other  ;  some  point  at  which  he  feels  he 
132 


Mobility  and  Decision  1 3  3 

must  take  something  for  granted,  at  which  he  therefore 
fails  to  respond  to  the  touch  of  logic,  of  truth.  If  you 
doubt  this,  find  some  Englishman  who  has  been  arguing 
about  the  rights  of  Europeans  to  colonise  in  Asia  or 
Africa,  and  apply  his  arguments  to  the  new-colonist 
microbes  who  have  lately  set  up  diphtheria  in  his  child. 
Or  find  someone  who  has  been  trying  to  persuade  the 
Irish  to  "  forgive "  the  English  settlers  and  come  to 
friendly  terms  with  them.  Apply  his  arguments  to  a 
colony  of  rats  which  have  settled  in  his  cellar.  In  either 
case  see  what  response  is  given  to  this  reversal  of 
direction  !  ^ 

Each  of  us  has  some  line  along  which  his  mind  fails 
to  respond  to  the  touch  of  logic,  of  reason.  Each  can, 
if  he  will  be  honest  with  himself,  detect  and  locate  these 
points.  Each  one  should  be  able  to  say  to  himself: — 
"  If  I  try  to  judge  about  so  and  so,  I  shall  judge  falsely, 
therefore  I  will  not  try  to  judge  of  it  at  all."  This  is  quite 
different  from  saying  : — "  As  I  think  differently  from  the 
majority,  I  must  be  thinking  falsely ;  therefore  I  will 
try  to  believe  what  others  believe."  Learn  first  to  know 
for  yourself  in  what  lines  your  mind  is  incapable  of 
moving  freely  both  ways  alike  ;  (and  do  not  suffer  your- 

1  Willingness  to  test  one's  thought  by  reversal  does  not  imply 
any  weakness  in  deciding  either  on  the  course  of  action  which  is 
one's  own  immediate  duty,  or  on  that  which  is  right  as  tending 
towards  the  higher  evolution  of  man.  On  the  contrary,  the  honesty 
of  one's  decision  is  best  proved  by  willingness  to  see  what  the 
argument  really  looks  like  when  turned  upside  down.  No  painter 
doubts  which  is  the  right  side  up  of  his  picture,  or  consents  to  its 
being  hung  permanently  wrong  side  up  ;  but  he  turns  it  upside 
down  for  a  few  minutes,  and  judges  of  its  true  balance  by  looking 
at  it  in  an  inverted  position. 


134  The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

self  to  try  to  think  in  those  lines  at  all) ;  secondly,  as  to 
any  line  in  which  you  can  think  freely,  learn  to  know 
when  your  mind  has  settled  back  to  its  true  condition 
of  equipoise  after  the  exercise  of  rocking  between 
opposite  extremes. 

Free  mobility  in  thought  does  not  imply  laxity  of 
moral  decision.  Force  for  moral  decision  should  be 
pumped  in  by  the  rocking  movement  of  thought  and 
emotion  ;  but  moral  decision  should  be  taken  when  the 
rocking  is  over  and  the  mind  has  come  back  to  that 
position  of  rest  in  which  one  is  no  longer  a  mere  free- 
thinker but  a  human  being  ;  in  which  personal  duties  and 
claims  reassert  themselves  ;  in  which  one  is  the  child  of 
one's  own  parents,  the  servant  of  one's  own  nation,  the 
outcome  of  one's  own  past,  in  which  sweet  reasonable- 
ness has  re-asserted  itself,  and  one  is  willing  to  accept, 
as  indications  of  one's  real  nature,  as  aids  to  one's  true 
evolution,  as  materials  for  future  thought,  those  duties 
which  the  past  has  fastened  upon  one,  duties  which  are 
really  due  to  those  other  individuals  whom  the  facts  of 
one's  past  have  linked  to  oneself  Force  for  decision 
should  be  pumped  in  by  the  freest  rocking  between 
alternate  moods,  opposite  exaggerations ;  decisions 
should  be  formed  at  the  time  of  equipoise.  The  habit 
should  be  acquired,  early  in  life,  of  acting,  constantly 
and  resolutely,  on  decisions  arrived  at  during  the  times 
of  equipoise.  Each  such  decision,  after  being  acted 
on,  affords  fresh  experience  and  materials  for  fresh 
thought ;  each  can  be  the  occasion  for  a  fresh  pumping 
up  of  force  by  a  fresh  process  of  rocking.  The  habit 
should  be  formed  young  of  acting  in  all  moods  on 
decisions  taken  in  moods  of  equipoise. 


Mobility  and  Decision  1 3  5 

Some  of  us  find  this  out  "too  late,"  as  we  call  it ;  too 
late  to  form  the  habit  within  our  own  immediate  per- 
sonality. But  it  is  never  too  late  to  help  to  form  a 
world  habit.  If  you  are  to  be  hanged  to-morrow, 
society  (of  which  you  are  a  member,  however  pompously 
it  may  play-act  at  eliminating  you)  will  be  helped  to 
come  to  sound  convictions  by  your  formulating  them 
clearly  to  yourself  to-day,  will  form  good  habits  the 
sooner  for  your  seeing  to-day  that  they  would  be  good 
to  form. 

"  Between  the  saddle  and  the  ground 
I  mercy  sought  and  mercy  found  " 

said  the  old  epitaph  in  the  days  when  men  believed  that 
it  was  God's  function  to  forgive  individual  man.  Now 
we  know  that  society  is  the  sinner  and  individuals  are 
its  victims.  Between  the  condemned  cell  and  the 
halter,  the  victim  may  confer  a  boon  upon  the  world. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE   STEADYING   OF   THE   IMAGINATION 

It  is  a  very  common  notion  that  faith  and  morals  are 
decaying  owing  to  the  decay  of  certain  beliefs  and 
opinions  (about  what  happened  or  did  not  happen  in 
Palestine  nineteen  hundred  years  ago,  and  about  what 
is  or  what  is  not  wholesome  and  advisable  in  regard  to 
sex  arrangements).  And  many  people  wish  to  keep  the 
old  beliefs  in  order  to  preserve  faith  and  morals. 

This  whole  view  of  things  seems  to  involve  a  large 
number  of  assumptions,  and  is  a  great  hindrance  to  the 
process  of  forging  passion  into  power. 

Why  should  not  beliefs  and  opinions  decay  ?  The 
process  has  been  going  on  ever  since  the  beginning  of 
history ;  it  appears  to  be  quite  normal  and  a  necessary 
condition  of  progress. 

If  the  decay  of  something  which  ought  to  decay  does 
harm  to  something  which  ought  not  to  decay,  this 
happens  not  because  the  former  has  decayed,  but 
because  the  decayed  matter  has  not  been  got  rid  of 
quickly  enough.  The  remedy,  for  diseases  born  of  the 
putrefaction  of  that  which  has  served  its  purpose  and  is 
no  longer  useful,  is  not  to  preserve  the  putrefying  matter 
but  to  get  rid  of  it  out  of  the  way  of  the  living  organism. 
Why  should  we  suppose  that  faith  and  morals  will  be 
136 


The  Steadying  of  the  Imagination   1 37 

any  the  healthier  for  our  chaining  them  up  to  dead 
beliefs  and  opinions  ? 

Then,  again,  I  exceedingly  doubt  whether  faith  and 
the  moral  sense  are  decaying  in  England  now  to  any 
very  large  extent,  as  yet.  They  are  unmistakably  going 
to  pieces,  but  at  present  they  seem  to  me  to  show 
symptoms  rather  of  being  battered  to  pieces  alive  than 
of  decay. 

There  are  certain  important  things  in  human  life 
which  ought  to  be  so  arranged  that  they  can  be  easily 
opened  to  let  anything  in  or  out,  but  which  when  shut 
should  be  securely  fastened,  so  as  to  prevent  useless, 
violent,  and  irregular  banging  to  and  fro. 

The  same  is  true  of  the  doors  and  windows  of  a  house. 
About  the  doors  and  windows  we  all  understand.  They 
should  open  easily,  shut  easily,  and  be  easily  capable  of 
secure  fastening.  But  in  moral  and  spiritual  matters  a 
mistake  seems  to  prevail  similar  to  that  which  was  pointed 
out  before  about  the  mobile  equilibrium.  In  these  matters, 
if  people  find  a  door  securely  shut  they  suppose  that  it 
would  be  necessarily  difficult  to  open,  and  when  they 
find  that  it  opens  easily  they  suppose  that  it  must 
necessarily  go  on  banging  till  it  has  done  serious  damage 
to  the  house.  This  superstitious  a  priori  assumption 
prevents  them  from  setting  quietly  to  work  to  adjust 
the  fastenings  so  as  to  secure  the  maximum  of  utility 
in  both  directions. 

Chapter  XVII.  will  suggest  a  system  of  door-handles 
suitable  for  our  house  of  thought.  But  first  we  must  say 
a  few  words  about  why  some  of  the  doors  are  at  present 
stuck  fast,  and  the  others  banging  "  fit  to  knock  the 
house  down,"  to  use  the  homely  housekeeper's  expression. 


138  The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

In  the  old  pre-scientific  days,  the  thought-life  of 
serious  people,  the  family  life  of  most  decent  people, 
and  the  parochial  life  of  everybody,  centred  round 
certain  things  as  to  which  comparatively  few  people 
had  any  doubts — things  to  which  it  was  possible  to 
attach  some  idea  of  permanence.  There  were  certain 
ideas  about  marriage  and  the  meaning  of  the  word 
"  purity,"  and  certain  opinions  about  things  which  were 
supposed  to  have  happened  in  Palestine  nineteen 
hundred  years  ago,  which  could  be  assumed  as  pre- 
misses in  family  conversation,  because  everybody  knew 
that  the  other  people  in  the  house  or  the  parish  believed 
in  them,  more  or  less.  And  it  was  possible  to  associate 
with  them  some  idea  of  permanence.  When  one 
member  of  a  family  passed  over  into  the  Unseen  World 
it  was  possible  for  the  mourners  to  conceive  of  him  or 
her  adoring  Jesus  in  heaven  as  he  had  done  on  earth, 
if  somewhat  more  ecstatically.  It  was  possible  to 
imagine  the  daughter  who  had  passed  away,  kneeling 
before  the  Throne,  wearing  a  white  robe  of  virginity 
which  was  a  glorified  version  of  the  confirmation  frock 
which  had  been  a  common  object  of  pious  pride  to  her 
mother  and  her  young  sisters. 

Imagination  had  thus  points  of  attachment  in  the 
realm  of  the  permanent. 

On  the  other  hand,  among  the  elite  of  the  intellectual 
world  of  now,  where  all  beliefs  and  opinions  have  been 
burned  away  in  the  glow  of  a  common  delight  in  the 
search  of  truth,  the  same  blessed  possibility  exists  in  a 
higher  form.  The  individual  thought-life  and  the  family 
conversation  centre  round  the  search  for  truth,  and  when 
the  father   or   child   passes   away  there   is    nothing   to 


The  Steadying  of  the  Imagination   1 3  9 

prevent  one's  imagining  him  or  her  still  absorbed  in 
the  search  for  truth,  still  dropping  germs  of  thought 
into  the  minds  of  those  left  behind.  All  this  is  pure 
imagination,  we  know.  It  proves  nothing ;  but  also  it 
disturbs  nothing.  The  phenomenon  which  we  call 
death  has  no  power  to  disturb  faith,  which  is  thus  left 
to  develop  a  la  grace  de  Dieu,  without  hindrance.  Now 
it  is  the  nature  of  faith  to  grow  if  circumstances  make 
it  possible  that  it  should.  But  in  a  very  large  number 
of  families  now  it  is  impossible  for  life  and  conversation 
to  centre  round  anything  that  can  be  conceived  of  as 
having  permanence.  Each  member  of  a  family  is  afraid 
to  speak  at  home  of  anything  serious  for  fear  of  up- 
rooting somebody  else's  prejudices.  Family  life  tends 
to  centre  round  "thing-y  things."  Family  affection, 
therefore,  has  no  mode  of  expression  or  of  exercise 
except  on  the  side  of  attending  to  each  other's  transitory 
sensations,  and  of  providing  for  each  other  little  comforts 
or  little  luxuries,  or,  if  there  is  money  enough,  great 
luxuries.  The  communal  mind  of  the  family  is  occupied 
about  things  that  cost  money,  waste  time,  and  fritter 
away  earnestness — things  which  perish  in  the  using. 

Now  though  it  was  possible  to  imagine  a  girl  who 
has  passed  away  adoring  Jesus  in  a  glorified  confirma- 
tion frock,  it  is  quite  impossible  to  imagine  her  making 
eyes  at  a  not  too  respectable  potentate  in  any  version, 
however  glorified,  of  a  Parisian  costume.  It  is  possible 
to  imagine  the  departed  wife  receiving  holy  communion 
from  the  hands  of  Jesus  or  one  of  the  Saints,  while  the 
husband  by  whose  side  she  used  to  kneel  still  receives 
it  at  the  hands  of  the  parson.  It  is  much  more  difficult 
to  imagine  the  departed  lady  ordering  in  ice-cream  from 


140  The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

a  fashionable  confectioner,  or  haggling  over  the  price  of 
turtle  soup. 

Or  again,  at  the  higher  thought-levels,  it  is  very  easy 
to  imagine  the  departed  friend  going  on  dropping  germs 
of  philosophy  into  one's  mind  as  he  had  been  doing  for 
half  a  century  before  he  passed  over.  It  would  be  much 
more  difficult  to  imagine  him  inspiring  one  with  thoughts 
about  which  looks  the  more  chic  of  two  drawing-room 
wallpapers.  The  worldliness,  the  thing-y-ness  of  a  life 
which  has  separated  itself  from  idolatrous  beliefs  and 
has  not  yet  attained  to  religious  philosophy,  is  loosening 
imagination  from  its  old  attachments,  without,  in  most 
cases,  providing  it  as  yet  with  any  fresh  ones. 

In  some  families,  therefore,  the  imagination  is  left  loose 
and  batters  faith  to  pieces.  In  others  it  is  clumsily 
nailed  up  so  that  faith  is  etiolated  for  want  of  air  and 
exercise. 

Again,  when  the  church  life  provided  rhythm,  joy, 
interest,  and  perpetual  change,  there  was  less  need  for 
people  to  seek  pleasures  for  themselves  or  each  other. 
But  life  without  some  joy  is  very  dull.  If  there  is  no 
joy  in  life  except  what  comes  from  immediate  sensation 
connected  with  the  mechanical  apparatus  of  enjoyment, 
one  cannot  be  very  scrupulous  as  to  one's  way  of  acquir- 
ing the  possibility  of  providing  enjoyment  for  the  dear 
ones.  And  if  we  cannot  get  it  out  of  that  which  is 
permanent,  one  must  snatch  incessantly  at  the  transitory 
forms  of  it.  Whereas,  where  life  is  one  perpetual  revel 
in  the  joys  of  either  mystic  belief  or  still  more  mystic 
truth-seeking,  it  becomes  too  valuable  to  be  wasted  on 
vices,  and  so  full  that  over-much  sensuous  pleasure  is  not 
a  temptation  but  an  intrusion,  a  nuisance  and  a  bore. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

TEACHER-LUST 

The    whole  discussion  about  education  is  thrown  into 

confusion  by  a  foregone  conclusion  that   some   classes 

of  desire  are  more  specially  evil  lusts  of  the  flesh  than 

other  classes  of  desire.     All  desires  are  lusts  of  the  flesh 

in  so  far  as  they  are  prompted  by  impulses  stored  up  in 

any  part  of  the  nervous  tissue.     The  lust  is  good  or  bad 

according  not  to  the  precise  part  of  the  body  in  which 

it  resides  but  to  its  being  or  not  being  correlated  with, 

and  subordinated  to,  the  conditions  of  the  environment, 

to  some  external  need.     The  three  great  nerve-centres, 

stomach,  sex-organ,  and    brain,  have  a  parallel  history 

and  run  parallel  courses.     And  those  of  which  we  know 

the  dangers  form  the  best  map  for  the  one  which  we 

have  to  study. 

The  stomach  has  for  its  function  to  absorb  creatures 

of  other  species  and  build  up  one's  own  flesh  by  their 

destruction.     To    do    this    sufficiently    for   health   and 

vigour  is  normal,  and  may  be  said  to  be  the  duty,  the 

religion,  of  a  stomach.     Its  first  aberration  is  to  perform 

this,  its  true  function,  in  excess  of  any  practical  need  or 

utility ;  to  build  up  a  really  healthy  body,  but  to  do  the 

building  in  such  a  manner  as  diverts  attention  from  the 

very  things  for  which  a  healthy  body  is  useful,  to  make 
141 


142  The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

the  having  a  healthy  body  an  object  instead  of  a  means 
to  an  end.  The  second  lust  of  the  stomach  is  to  eat 
actual  food,  but  in  excess  of  what  can  be  digested ;  the 
part  which  is  in  excess  diverts  digestive  force  from  that 
normal  quantity  which,  if  properly  digested,  would  have 
built  up  healthy  tissue,  and  so  induces  disease.  The 
third  lust  of  the  stomach  is  to  get  put  into  itself  things 
which  have  no  tendency  to  build  up  tissue,  which  only 
momentarily  amuse  it  with  a  false  sensation  of  being 
satisfied. 

The  sex-organ  has  a  similar  gamut  ot  degradation. 
Its  function  being  to  perpetuate  the  race,  and  especially 
the  best  types,  its  first  aberration  is  to  make  the  having 
of  a  large  and  prosperous  family  the  be-all  and  end-all 
of  existence,  and  to  sacrifice  all  other  considerations  to 
making  one's  own  posterity  a  large  and  important 
figure  in  the  future  of  the  human  race.  This  was  the 
ideal  of  some  old  Jewish  patriarchs.  The  second  step 
downhill  is  to  put  children  into  the  world  in  excess  of 
the  present  possibility  of  bringing  them  up  healthy. 
The  third  is  to  amuse  the  sex-organ  with  sensations  in 
ways  which  have  no  tendency  to  produce  posterity. 

Now  I  do  not  wish  to  assert  or  imply  either  that  the 
stomach  has  no  function  except  that  of  digestion,  or  the 
sex-organs  none  but  that  of  procreation.  It  may  well 
be  that  each  of  these  organs  is  on  the  road  to  develop  a 
connection  with  some  other  function.  I  do  not  profess 
to  judge  for  other  people  exactly  when  the  indulgence 
of  a  desire  is  right  and  when  wrong ;  I  am  only  pointing 
out  a  parallelism  between  three  series  of  facts,  as  to 
which  most  people  judge  themselves  and  guide  them- 
selves by  different  standards,  and  as  to  which  they  would. 


Teacher-Lust  H3 

it  seems  to  me,  guide  themselves  more  wisely  if  they 
judged  them  all  three  by  the  same  standard. 

The  third  series  is  that  which  relates  to  teacher-lusts. 
The  teacher  (whether  school-teacher,  minister  of  religion, 
political  leader,  or  head  of  a  family)  has  a  desire  to  make 
those  under  him  conform  themselves  to  his  ideals. 
Nations  could  not  be  built  up,  nor  children  preserved 
from  ruin,  if  some  such  desire  did  not  exist  and  exert 
itself  in  some  degree.  But  it  has  its  gamut  of  lusts,  very 
similar  to  those  run  down  by  the  other  faculties.  First, 
the  teacher  wants  to  regulate  the  actions,  conduct,  and 
thoughts  of  other  people  in  a  way  that  does  no  obvious 
harm  but  is  quite  in  excess  both  of  normal  rights  and 
of  practical  necessity.  Next,  he  wants  to  proselytise, 
convince,  control,  to  arrest  the  spontaneous  action  of 
other  minds,  to  an  extent  which  ultimately  defeats  its 
own  ends  by  making  the  pupils  too  feeble  and  automatic 
to  carry  on  his  teaching  into  the  future  with  any  vigour. 
Lastly,  he  acquires  a  sheer  automatic  lust  for  telling 
other  people  "  to  don't,"  for  arresting  spontaneous  action 
in  others  in  a  way  that  destroys  their  power  even  to 
learn  at  the  time  what  he  is  trying  to  teach  them. 
What  is  wanted  is  that  we  should  pull  these  three  series 
tight  so  as  to  see  their  parallelism,  and  not  go  on  fogging 
ourselves  with  any  such  foolish  notion  as  that  sex-passion 
is  a  lust  of  the  flesh  and  teacher-lust  a  thing  in  itself 
pure  and  good,  which  may  legitimately  be  indulged  in 
to  the  uttermost. 

Few  teachers  now  are  so  conceited  as  not  to  know 
that  they  have  a  great  deal  to  learn,  and  that  their 
methods  need  revising  and  improving,  but  the  majority 
are  seeking  for  improved  methods  of  doing  more  of  what 


1 44  The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

they  are  already  doing  a  great  deal  too  much  of.  The 
improvement  which  they  most  need  is  to  be  brought 
under  conviction,  to  be  made  see  their  conduct,  their  aims, 
their  whole  attitude  towards  their  pupils  and  their  work, 
in  the  light  reflected  on  them  from  those  of  the  drunkard 
and  the  debauchee. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

THE   NEW   IDEA   OF   ORDER 

Three  main  symbols  of  authority  have  shared  between 
them  the  attention  of  the  world  :  the  slave-driver's  whip, 
the  shepherd's  crook,  and  the  conductor's  b^ton.  A 
reasonable  man  should  make  up  his  mind  which  of  the 
three  he  prefers :  which  he  will  submit  to  when  it  is  his 
turn  to  submit  and  wield  when  the  time  comes  for  him 
to  rule. 

The  slave-driver's  whip  has  various  modifications,  con- 
ventionalised disguises :  the  sceptre,  the  mace,  the 
truncheon,  the  cane.  The  appeal  of  them  all  alike  is  to 
immediate  impressions  on  the  senses.  Their  message  is 
brutal  but  honest: — "  If  you  will  obey  my  will,  your 
sensations  shall  be  more  agreeable  than  they  will  be  if 
you  thwart  my  will." 

The  shepherd's  crook  is  modified  into  a  bishop's 
crozier.  The  functions  of  the  two  are  similar  :  to  keep  the 
sheep  from  strenuous  exercise  in  high  altitudes,  where 
their  limbs  grow  fleet  and  their  tissues  tough ;  to  keep 
off  wolves  who  might  dispute  possession  of  any  portion 
of  the  flock  with  the  man  who  considers  himself  its 
rightful  owner  ;  to  lead  them  into  plentiful  pasture,  so  as 
to  make  them  fat  and  their  flesh  tender,  and  guide  them 
cunningly  at  last  into  the  yard  of  the  slaughter-house 
145  10 


1 46  The  Forging  of  Passion  into  Power 

The  whole  system  is  simply  one  long  deception — often 
of  sentimental  self-deception. 

The  conductor's  baton  exerts  no  control  except  during 
certain  hours  of  practice  and  of  performance.  Once  the 
appointed  time  has  expired,  every  man  is  free  to  go 
where  he  likes  and  do  as  he  chooses.  He  is  freer 
(because  more  able)  than  he  would  have  been  without 
his  occasional  episodes  of  servitude,  to  play  by  himself 
whatever  tune  he  chooses,  or  to  enter  into  effective  com- 
binations with  musicians  not  known  in  that  conductor's 
orchestra. 

Friends,  under  which  symbol  will  you  serve?  And 
by  which  will  you  prefer  to  rule  ? 


But  let  us  remember  that  even  for  the  shepherds  there 
is  room  in  hell. 

We  can  all  say  to  the  Great  Purifying  Pulsator  : — "  If 
we  make  our  bed  in  hell,  Thou  art  there :  forge  and 
transform  our  Passion  into  Power." 


PRINTED    BY    NEILL   AND  CO.,    LTD.,    EDINBURGH. 


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